Munster crosses the southern part of the island, extending itself northward on both the east and west coasts. Its principal and most famous city is Cork, and the whole county abounds in that wild romantic scenery which has fondly inspired so many poets and painters.
To these four provinces some ancient writers added a fifth, called Meath, formed by a small part taken from each of the other provinces, but independent of all of them.
Of the ancient commerce of Ireland Tacitus wrote: “Its channels and harbours are better known to merchants than those of Britain,” which eulogy, of course, referred to the first century.
The Phœnicians are reputed to have worked the mines which existed in the neighbourhood of the lakes of Killarney, and to have acquired the art of “extracting the celebrated Tyrian purple from the juice of shell-fish.”
Cæsar’s invasion of what are known as the British Isles was supposed to have been instigated by the export from Ireland of the “margaritas” taken from these Killarney mines.
That the commerce referred to by Tacitus was that carried on by the Phœnicians, is deduced from the fact that the Romans knew nothing of the country at that time.
CHAPTER IV.
ROMANCE AND SENTIMENT
THE ingredients which most writers on Ireland, the historians, the antiquarians, the political agitators, the publicists, the poets, and, last but not least, the fictionists—from the days of Samuel Lover to George Moore and Bernard Shaw—have used as a basis for their written word have been many and varied.
Some have pictured it as a land of desolation and poverty, rich in nothing, while others have descanted elaborately upon its treasures and wealth of historical, architectural, and ecclesiological remains; the beauty of the literature of its native legends; its poetry and music; and erstwhile its native tongue, which may have a latent charm to those versed therein, but which will never become a popular speech, as an Irish member must have hoped