irty high to the cornice, the aisles
separated by a double row of columns; nothing can be lighter or more
pleasing. The town belongs entirely to his lordship. Rent of it 2,000
pounds a year. His estate extends from Drumbridge, near Lisburn, to
Larne, twenty miles in a right line, and is ten broad. His royalties are
great, containing the whole of Loch Neagh, which is, I suppose, the
greatest of any subject in Europe. His eel fishery at Tome, and Port
New, on the river Ban, lets for 500 pounds a year; and all the fisheries
are his to the leap at Coleraine. The estate is supposed to be 31,000
pounds a year, the greatest at present in Ireland. Inishowen, in
Donegal, is his, and is 11,000 pounds of it. In Antrim, Lord Antrim's is
the most extensive property, being four baronies, and one hundred and
seventy-three thousand acres. The rent 8,000 pounds a year, but re-let
for 64,000 pounds a year, by tenants that have perpetuities, perhaps the
cruellest instance in the world of carelessness for the interests of
posterity. The present lord's father granted those leases.

I was informed that Mr. Isaac, near Belfast, had four acres, Irish
measure, of strong clay land not broken up for many years, which being
amply manured with lime rubbish and sea shells, and fallowed, was sown
with wheat, and yielded 87 pounds 9s. at 9s. to 12s. per cwt. Also that
Mr. Whitley, of Ballinderry, near Lisburn, a tenant of Lord Hertford's,
has rarely any wheat that does not yield him 18 pounds an acre. The
tillage of the neighbourhood for ten miles round is doubled in a few
years. Shall export one thousand tons of corn this year from Belfast,
most of it to the West Indies, particularly oats.

August 1. To Arthur Buntin's, Esq., near Belfast; the soil a stiff clay;
lets at old rents 10s., new one 18s., the town parks of that place 30s.
to 70s., ten miles round it 10s. to 20s., average 13s. A great deal of
flax sown, every countryman having a little, always on potato land, and
one ploughing: they usually sow each family a bushel of seed. Those who
have no land pay the farmers 20s. rent for the land a bushel of seed
sows, and always on potato land. They plant many more potatoes than they
eat, to supply the market at Belfast; manure for them with all their
dung, and some of them mix dung, earth, and lime, and this is found to do
better. There is much alabaster near the town, which is used for stucco
plaster; sells from 1 pound 1s. to 25s.