Young Mr. Smith is quite a hero among the people on this account. There is an expressed regret that Mr. Smith the elder interfered to prevent the young marksman from shooting them all; very few would blame him if he did, as the men, though too nervous to do harm, lay in wait for the purpose of murder. Still it is revolting to hear people in cold blood regret so heartily that there was not more bloodshed.
The scenery—as scenery—was as grand as bare heathery mountains and wide desolate waters could make an almost treeless solitude, but viewed as a home for human beings, viewed as land that has rent and taxes and existence to be carved out of it, it has a hopeless look.
The houses are something dreadful, to consider them in the light of human habitations. Limestone does not abound here, and therefore the houses of the poorer sort are built like a cairn or a fence of loose stones without mortar. When the Atlantic winds sweep in here in winter time, the crevices in these houses will be so many chinks to whistle through. God pity the poor!
The people along the road here had a thrifty look; the men wore homespun coats; the pinned-up dresses of the women showed petticoats which were homespun of warm madder red, well dyed, good and comfortable looking. Of course the majority of the women were barefoot, but they were used to it.
At Molraney we stopped to deliver mails. In these cases the passengers sit on the car in the street, while the driver hands in the mail, gossips awhile, goes into the convenient "licensed to sell" for a taste of something, and the police saunter down for the mail and look you over, judiciously but not offensively, and at last you make another start.
Arrived at the Sound, you find a nice-looking hotel for such a remote place. There is any amount of liquor to be got: you can also get the never-varying chop or steak served up with another variety of miserable cooking, but you cannot get a bit of fish any more than if the sea were five hundred miles off instead of lapping on the rocks less than a perch away. Was pulled across the Sound by two young girls, who handled the big oars as if they were used to them, and urged the boat with its load of men across the green waters very swiftly with their strong white arms. As we neared the island of Achill trees were conspicuous by their absence, and purple heather was plentiful.
Achill island is a treeless place. There are mountains beyond mountains lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and most horrible habitations. We passed the plantation, noticeable because there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches, birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes; great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr. Pike has already made for himself a delicious looking home amid this barren waste. It enriched our eyes to look at it.
Mr. Pike and Mr. Stoney, of the castellated new building down at the edge of Clew Bay, have the distinction of being the most unpopular landlords in this part of the country. After we passed Mr. Pike's place there were no more trees. The houses are very bad indeed; the cattle in the pasture are of the small native breed, and have little appearance of milk; the sheep are very miserable and scraggy. I have often heard of Cook's recipes saying, "Take the scrag end of a piece of mutton." These recipes must have emanated from Achill Island, where the mutton must be pretty much all scrag.
After we drove a long way—what appeared a long way—I do not believe they measure all the crooks and turns this most serpentine of roads into the miles—we passed establishment of lay brothers called the Monastery. There is quite a block of white buildings, and a good many reclaimed fields, green with the young crops, lie in the valley below them. There is a bell in a cupola that will call to work and worship, and a chapel where they meet to pray. The valley where their fields lie stretches to the sea, and in the bay lay a smack of some kind by which they trade to Westport. They labor with their own hands, so have not the name of employing any laborers, but have the name of dispensing charity. I should have liked to see the buildings and the brethren, but did not make the attempt.
At length we came to Dugart, the Missionary settlement. A little row of white-washed houses on one side of a street that ran up hill, another row of whitewashed houses that ran along the brow of the hill at a right angle. Slieve Mor behind towering up between the village and the sea; below the hill at the foot of another mountain is the rectory, beside it the church, both having a trimming of young trees; some good fields, the best I have seen in Achill, and a pretty garden lie round both rectory and church. This is the mission village of Dugart.