The feeling against the Land League among the Conservative classes in the north is comparatively languid to the deeper and more intense feeling that prevails southward. The gulf between the two peoples that inhabit the country widens. After leaving Cavan we crossed a small point of Longford and thence into Westmeath, passing quite close to Derryvaragh Lake, and then to Lake Owel after passing Mulingar, getting a glimpse of yet another, Westmeath Lake.
After passing Athlone and getting into Roscommon we got a view of that widening of the Shannon called Lough Ree, sixteen miles long and in some parts three miles wide. A woman on the train told me of that island on this lough, Hare island, with Lord Castlemaine's beautiful plantation, of the castle he has built there, decorated with all that taste can devise, heart can desire or riches buy. A happy man must be my Lord Castlemaine. Lough Ree is another silent water, like the waters of the west unbroken by the keel of any boat, undarkened by the smoke of any steamer, the breeze flying over it fills no sail.
I have mentioned before how completely the County Mayo has gone to grass. The same thing is apparent in a lesser degree elsewhere. There is not a breadth of tillage sufficient to raise food for the people. Cattle have been so high that hay and pasturage were more remunerative, and the laborers depend for food on the imported Indian meal. The grassy condition of every place strikes one while passing along; but Roscommon seems to be given up to meadow and pasture land almost altogether. The hay crop seems light in some places. The rain has been so constant that saving it has been difficult in some places. I saw some hay looking rather black, which is an unbecoming color for hay. Roscommon is a very level country as far as I saw of it, and very thinly populated.
The town of Roscommon has a quiet inland look, with a good deal of trading done in a subdued manner. There is the extensive ruin of an old castle in it; the old gaol is very castle-like also. I drove over to Athleague as soon as I arrived, a small squalid village some four Irish miles away. The land is so level that one can see far on every side as we drive along, and the country is really empty. The people left in the little hamlets have one universal complaint, the rent is too high to be paid and leave the people anything to live on. It was raised to the highest during prosperous years; when the bad years came it became impossible.
I enquired at this village of Athleague what had become of all the people that used to live here in Roscommon. They were evicted for they could not pay their rents. Where are they? Friends in America sent passage tickets for many, some, out of the sale of all, made out what took them away; some were in the poor house; some dead and gone. The land is very empty of inhabitants.
CHAPTER XLIX
AN EMPTY COUNTRY—RAPACIOUS LANDLORDS.
From Roscommon I drove to Lanesborough where Longford and Roscommon meet at a bridge across the Shannon, and where a large Catholic church stands on each side of the river. The bridge at Lanesborough, a swing bridge, substantial and elegant, the solid stone piers—all the stone work on bridge and wharves is of hewn stone—speak of preparations for a great traffic which is not there, like the warehouses of Westport. Seeing all facilities for trade and all conveniences for trade prepared, and the utter silence over all, makes one think of enchanted places where there must come a touch of some kind to break the charm before the bustle of life awakes and "leaps forward like a cataract."
One man stood idle and solitary on the wharf at Lanesborough as if he were waiting for the sudden termination of this spell-bound still life.
My glimpse of Longford from the neighborhood of Lanesborough showed a place of wooded hills and valleys covered with crops, and with this glimpse we turned back over the plain of Roscommon. The road lay through peat bog for a good part of the way, and the mud-wall cabins were a sad sight indeed.