Who knows but before I die I
may see the Russians helping the French against us?"

CHAPTER CVIII

Town of Newport--The Usk--Note of Recognition--An Old
Acquaintance--Connamara Quean--The Wake--The Wild Irish--The Tramping
Life--Business and Prayer--Methodists--Good Counsel.

Newport is a large town in Monmouthshire, and had once walls and a
castle. It is called in Welsh Cas Newydd ar Wysg, or the New Castle upon
the Usk. It stands some miles below Caerlleon ar Wysg, and was probably
built when that place, at one time one of the most considerable towns in
Britain, began to fall into decay. The Wysg or Usk has its source among
some wild hills in the south-west of Breconshire, and, after absorbing
several smaller streams, amongst which is the Hondu, at the mouth of
which Brecon stands, which on that account is called in Welsh Aber Hondu,
and traversing the whole of Monmouthshire, enters the Bristol Channel
near Newport, to which place vessels of considerable burden can ascend.
Wysg or Usk is an ancient British word, signifying water, and is the same
as the Irish word uisge or whiskey, for whiskey, though generally serving
to denote a spirituous liquor, in great vogue amongst the Irish, means
simply water. The proper term for the spirit is uisquebaugh, literally
acqua vitae, but the compound being abbreviated by the English, who have
always been notorious for their habit of clipping words, one of the
strongest of spirits is now generally denominated by a word which is
properly expressive of the simple element water.

Monmouthshire is at present considered an English county, though
certainly with little reason, for it not only stands on the western side
of the Wye, but the names of almost all its parishes are Welsh, and many
thousands of its population still speak the Welsh language. It is called
in Welsh Sir, or Shire, Fynwy, and takes its name from the town Mynwy or
Monmouth, which receives its own appellation from the river Mynwy or
Minno, on which it stands. There is a river of much the same name, not
in Macedon but in the Peninsula, namely the Minho, which probably got its
denomination from that race cognate to the Cumry, the Gael, who were the
first colonisers of the Peninsula, and whose generic name yet stares us
in the face and salutes our ears in the words Galicia and Portugal.

I left Newport at about ten o'clock on the 16th; the roads were very wet,
there having been a deluge of rain during the