iduff, which of the Englishman
Is cal' de Blackwater.'

The shores of this Irish Rhine are so lovely that the sail on a
sunny day is one of unequalled charm. Behind us the mountains ranged
themselves in a mysterious melancholy background; ahead the river wended
its way southward in and out, in and out, through rocky cliffs and
well-wooded shores.

The first tributary stream that we met was the little Finisk, on the
higher banks of which is Affane House. The lands of Affane are said to
have been given by one of the FitzGeralds to Sir Walter Raleigh for a
breakfast, a very high price to pay for bacon and eggs, and it was here
that he planted the first cherry-tree in Ireland, bringing it from the
Canary Islands to the Isle of Weeping.

Looking back just below here, we saw the tower and cloisters of Mount
Melleray, the Trappist monastery. Very beautiful and very lonely looked
'the little town of God,' in the shadows of the gloomy hills. We wished
we had known the day before how near we were to it, for we could have
claimed a night's lodging at the ladies' guest-house, where all creeds,
classes, and nationalities are received with a cead-mile-failte, [*] and
where any offering for food or shelter is given only at the visitors
pleasure. The Celtic proverb, 'Melodious is the closed mouth,' might be
written over the cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the
monks who teach in the schools or who attend visitors are absolved from
the vow.

*A hundred thousand welcomes.

Next came Dromana Castle, where the extraordinary old Countess of
Desmond was born,--the wonderful old lady whose supposed one hundred
and forty years so astonished posterity. She must have married Thomas,
twelfth Earl of Desmond, after 1505, as his first wife is known to have
been alive in that year. Raleigh saw her in 1589, and she died in 1604:
so it would seem that she must have been at least one hundred and ten or
one hundred and twelve when she met her untimely death,--a death brought
about entirely by her own youthful impetuosity and her fondness for
athletic sports. Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, makes the
following reference to her in his Table-Book, written when he was
ambassador at Paris, about 1640:--

'The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV. time in
England, and lived till towards the end of Queen Elizabeth, so she must
needes be neare one hundred and forty yeares old. She had a new sett