der of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing
my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot.
"No granite _in situ_ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain
limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the
tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a
cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most
of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line I saw was fenced with a
Galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and
eighteen inches thick. "The men build stone walls with great skill,"
said Mr. Wood, "but half the number of English navvies would do more
excavating."

The pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came
forward for their money. All had the same well-nourished sturdy look,
and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. They conversed in
Irish, but they mostly understood English, even if they could not
speak it themselves. Whole villages were there seemingly of the same
name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. There was John
Toole and John Toole Pat, John Pat Toole and Pat Toole John.
Permutation was the order of the day. There was Tom Joyce Pat and Pat
Tom Joyce, Tom Joyce Sally and Tom Joyce boy. Besides this change
ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red
and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat.
This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to
desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly
seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in
1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden,
inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity.

In Oughterard I met an American tourist who said, "I should think Home
Rule would about settle Old England. The Irish people show a most
unfriendly spirit, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no
such word as gratitude in the Irish language. There is some change in
this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the
agitators have been everything is going to the bad. Nothing but
distrust and suspicion. No Irishman would invest in Irish securities.
They prefer South Americans! That startled me. I am told that Tim
Healy is worth L30,000, all got out of Home Rule, and my informant
says that Tim would not risk a penny in his own country. Tim is a
blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mig