Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a picturesque beach. The view out over Galway Bay is very beautiful, and the wide stretch of water seems to offer a perfect harbour; but there were no ships riding at anchor there. Time was when the people of the town fancied their bay was to become a world-famous port because of its nearness to America, and a steamship company was formed, and the government was persuaded to build a great breakwater and half a mile of quays and a floating dock five acres in extent. But the company's life was a short one, for one of its boats sank and another burned, and the other companies all preferred to go on to Liverpool or London or Southampton, and the docks and quays and harbour of Galway were left deserted, save for the little hookers of the Claddagh fishermen.
CHAPTER XIX
IAR CONNAUGHT
We were ready to say good-bye to Galway and to fare westward into far Connaught, most primitive of Irish provinces; but on Sunday there is only a single train each way, and the westbound one leaves Galway at six in the morning. We managed to catch it, somewhat to our surprise, crossed the Corrib River on a long bridge and viaduct, and were at once in Iar Connaught—West Connaught, the domain of the wild O'Flaherties, from whom the dwellers in Galway every Sunday besought the Lord to deliver them.
The train skirts the shore of Lough Corrib, and one has beautiful glimpses of the lake and the hills beyond; and then it plunges into a wild and desolate country, strewn with great glacial boulders, some of them poised so precariously on hill-side and cliff-edge that it seems the rattle of every passing train would bring them crashing down.
And then we came out upon wide moors, crossed by innumerable little streams, and then ahead of us the great Connemara mountains began to loom against the sky—gigantic masses of grey granite, bare of vegetation, even of the skin of turf which can find foothold almost anywhere, but which is powerless against these masses of solid rock. The Maamturk Mountains are the first to be seen, rugged giants two thousand feet high, and the road mounts toward them over a pass, and then dips rapidly to the station at Recess, which was our stopping-point.
It was still so early that there was nobody about, and when we got to the hotel we found it locked; but the porter hastened to open the door in answer to our ring, and we found ourselves in one of the nicest hotels we had encountered anywhere in Ireland. We had already made up our minds to spend that Sunday climbing Lissoughter, a mountain just back of the hotel, famous for the view from its top; and so, as soon as we had disposed of our luggage and eaten a most appetising breakfast, we inquired how to get to it. And Sheila was summoned to tell us—Sheila with a complexion like peach-bloom, and the brightest of blue eyes, and the fluffiest of brown hair, fit to pose as the prototype of Sweet Peggy, or Kathleen Bawn, or Kitty Neil, or any other of the lovely girls the Irish poets delighted to sing. Not the least of the attractions of this hotel at Recess are the girls who work there—as bright and blooming a lot of Irish lasses as one could wish to see—and Sheila, I think, was the flower of them all. She told us how to go, and we set off happily through the soft, bright air of the morning.
Our road, at first, lay along the margin of a placid lake, then turned off sharply to the right, and the climb began. It was an easy climb, with beautiful views over bogs and lakes and mountains opening at every step. There was a wet bog on either side the road, and at a place where the peat was being cut, we walked out to take a closer look at it. And as we stood there gazing down into the black excavation, we felt the ground trembling beneath our feet; and when we looked up, there was a man striding upward toward us, two hundred feet away, but at every stride shaking the bog so that we could feel the tremor distinctly. The bog shook more and more as he approached and passed us; and then the tremor grew fainter and fainter as he went on his way. Unless I had felt it, I would never have believed that the footsteps of a single man could have created so wide a disturbance, and I understood how serious were the difficulties the railways had to face in getting across the bogs of central Ireland.