“Look there,” said Trench, pointing them out to me, “those are fine trees, are they not? The Canadian and Norwegian firs are now brought to us so cheaply that the few trees we possess are not worth the expense of cutting down. The only deer now left in Ireland are here. From time to time there is a hunt to amuse the tourists. After an hour the animal takes to the water The hounds are recoupled, and the stag escapes with a bath!”
As we ascend, the landscape becomes more charming. At our feet on the right we see the largest lake in Killarney, covered with islets, that at a distance resemble bouquets of verdure. The stream that flows at the bottom of the valley feeds three or four others that we pass by in succession. By degrees the woods disappear, and the mountains seem bristling with huge grey rocks.
This rough country, however, is not a desert. Wherever the rocks have held a little vegetable earth one sees a small field, and then by looking carefully we finally perceive a small hut. There are people vegetating there.
Catching sight of one of these houses not far from the road, between us and the stream, I asked Mr. Trench to allow me to visit it.
“Wait a moment,” said he, “I will go with you. Tell them that you are French, and give them a shilling, then you are certain to be well received.”
We descended by a goats’-path. I wish to assure my readers that the details that follow are strictly true, and that all the figures were written down on the spot.
The house in front of us was about eight yards long by five wide. One of the gables is formed by the vertical side of a large rock against which it leans. The other gable and the two side walls are built of dry stone. The walls are only about six feet high, but the roof is very sloping, and this renders the inside room sufficiently lofty.
The roof is formed of a few bundles of reeds and clods of grass which rest on a dozen bare poles. There is neither chimney nor window, and the earth is the floor. The smoke escapes as it best can through the numerous holes in the roof. The little daylight that enters can only come in by the same way. The occupiers walk about on the mud. The hearth, on which a few clods of turf are burning, is formed by four or five stones arranged in a circle. The opening that is used as a doorway must also serve as the entrance for every wind, for there is not the least trace of anything to close it with. With regard to furniture, I can only discover a saucepan, a kind of watering pot, an old, broken iron bedstead, on which an old blanket is thrown, and which stands to the left of the door, between it and the rock; on the right there is a camp bedstead, formed of a few planks supported by stakes The family, which surrounds us, consists of a man about forty years old, his wife, his mother-in-law, who is about seventy-seven and quite blind, and four children from ten to two years old. I never saw such utter misery in any part of the world. The man is covered with tattered garments that can hardly, strictly speaking, be called clothes. He has also shoes. In this country agriculture is all carried on with a spade. Now in order to dig with a spade one must have shoes. This is why the men are the only members of a family who wear anything on their feet. The nameless rags that are wrapped round the women and children defy description. The old woman, who is blind, as I have said, only wears a chemise and a skirt that scarcely reaches her knees. These two garments are in such a state that she is really almost naked. When she tries to walk she drags herself from rock to rock in order not to fall, testing the ground with her feet which are covered with cuts. The other woman is dressed in about the same style. The two smaller children are quite naked, and they certainly look the best. But it is terrible to see the sickly skin, the hollow cheeks, and drawn features of these poor people who are evidently suffering from hunger.
How can it be otherwise? When the husband gets any work it is on the road, and he earns a shilling a day; but he rarely finds anything to do, and the money only pays the rent. The whole family must therefore live on the produce of two cows and the potato field. I asked if I might see it.
A few steps from the hut a bank of rocks rises at the foot of the mountain, the tableland thus formed arrests the soil that the rain brings down from the heights above, the layer of vegetable mould is therefore a little thicker there than elsewhere. It is this tableland that has been cleared. I measured it. It is about sixty-two yards long by twenty-nine wide. I notice that only seven or eight hundred yards of the enclosure are really fit for cultivation. I am then shown the cows; they are two miserable little thin beasts of the native race, called Kerry cows; they are as thin as the horse in the Apocalypse and jump like chamois over the rocks that surround them. I asked myself what they could possibly find to eat.