IRELAND TO-DAY.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1519, 12 February 1886, Page 3

IRELAND TO-DAY.

Ireland's picturesqueness lies in its coast scenery. Its centre is mostly a dead level of bog; or pasture-land. There are few or none of the smiling harvest-fields which make Eugland so pretty; the climate refuses to grow cereals, and, alas ! the people have not the persistent industry required for cultivated farming. Neat hedgerows, well-kept woodlands, good roads and, above all, the sweet, contented-looking villages and hamlets that one sees continually in England, must not be looked for here. Yet it was a green and pleasant country that we swept through—no, crawled through—lrish railways always crawl —and, reaching our station at last, we mounted, defiant of old time, the familiar outside car with its lively Irish pony. Excellent animal ! that day he did forty miles in sixteen hours.

Does any one know how delightful it is to drive across country in an outside car, with just enough necessity for holding on to keep your mind amused, and just enough jolting and shaking to give you " the least taste in life "of horse exercise ? How pleasant to feel the wind in your face, and see the rain-clouds drifting behind you — to catch in passing the sights and scents of moorland gorse, of ditchbank primroses, and hidden hyacinths, and the yellow gleam of whole acres of cowslips! I never saw so many cowslips or so large; a sign, alas! of poor land. When the soil improves the cowslips always disappear. And for birds —there seemed a blackbird in every tall tree, and a dozen larks singing madly over every bit of common. But of human habitations there were very few. Now and then a croup of little Kerry cows—mostly black—or a family of happy pigs, often black, too, dotted the pastures, imp - ing another family close by, who turned out to gaze at us from what might be either cabin or cowshed, or both — half clad boys or girls, one could hardly tell which, with wild shocks of hair and splendid Irish eyes, full of fuu and intelligence. And sometimes we passed a woman with a shawl over her head, Irish fashion, carrying a huge bundle and perhaps a child as well, who first looked at us then looked away. Thin, poverty-pinched faces they often were, but neither coarse, sullen, nor degraded, nothing like the type of low Irish that one sees in towns. Much to be pitied truly, but certainly not to be despised. Some, perhaps, drop a courtesy to "the quality," but generally they just look at us with a dull curiosity and pass on. Little enough have " the quality," done for them, poor souls. Miss Muloch.