dwellers on the mountain who have never received any
religious instruction. Chapels are few and remote from each other, and
even the "stations" kept for the purpose of getting at the scattered
population only attract those dwelling within reasonable distances.
The poor mountaineers in the neighbourhood of the Recess Valley and
away over the hills seldom go far enough from home to rub shoulders
with civilisation. Many of them have never seen bigger places than
Letterfrack and Leenane, and those perhaps not fifty times in their
lives.

The islanders of Clew Bay are almost as difficult to assist and to
improve as the highlanders of Joyce's country, Southern Mayo, and
Great and Little Connemara; but for an opposite reason. The latter are
thinly scattered on the fringe of the grazing farms, while the former
are crowded together on islands inadequate to support them. This
question of space assumes a curious importance in Ireland owing to
the want of other industry than such as is intimately connected with
the land. With the exception of a few manufacturing districts in
Ulster, which is altogether another country from Connaught, there are
no industries in Ireland independent of the produce of arable land and
pasture. What is to be enjoyed by the people must be got out of the
land, and this in a country where nobody will turn to and work hard as
a cultivator so long as he can graze, "finish," or "job" cattle,
sheep, or horses. I was citing to a Mayo-man this defect of the
so-called farmer, and was at once met by a prompt reply. The tendency
to graze cattle, which is not hard work, and to "gad" about to cattle
fairs, which are esteemed the greatest diversion the country affords,
is an indication of the distinct superiority of the quick-witted Celt
to the dull Saxon hind. An Irish peasant cultivator is a being of
greater faculty of expansion than Wessex Hodge. He is profoundly
ignorant and absurdly superstitious, but he is naturally keen-witted,
and his innate gifts are brightened by contact with his fellow man. He
is not a ploughman, for he often cultivates with the spade alone, and
he has, besides his oats, his potatoes, his cabbages, and mayhap a few
turnips, and a variety of animals, all of which he understands--or
misunderstands. If a holder of twenty or thirty, or, still better,
forty acres, he will have a horse, a cow, a beast or two, a few sheep,
and some turkeys and geese. It is possible to have all these on
fifteen acr