From Killarney to Cahirciveen is forty-five miles; beyond that is the island of Valentia. There are many wild views to be seen on this island, the property of the Knight of Kerry. The traveller here can notice how the Atlantic is wearing away the Kerry coast.
The first part of this drive of forty-five miles is through a poor, poverty-stricken country, with such cabins of mud and misery as are an amusement to the tourist and a pain and a shame to the Irish lover of his country. There is nothing about these habitations to hint that any idea of comfort had ever penetrated here. For the reason of pelting rain and driving winds I was forced to give up my intention of going across by car to Kenmare, and from thence to Skibbereen, and took the train for Cork. The land seems to grow better the nearer we come to Cork.
Arrived at Cork, the first object which attracted my attention was the monument to Father Mathew. The temperance cause to which he dedicated his life sadly needs another champion. Will another Father Mathew arise?
As soon after my arrival in Cork as I was comfortably settled, I sallied out to discover the river Lee with an insane notion that I would hear "the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on" its pleasant waters. I discovered the river with tree-shaded, secluded dwellings on one bank and a wide green pasture on another. There was a bridge at the place where I first came in sight of the river, and a great crowd, so eager as to be silent, gazing up the stream. Thinking it was a boat race that drew their attention, I crossed the bridge to gain the green pasture at the other side. The pasture was reached by a little arched door through a boundary wall, where a policeman kept guard. There was a great crowd around this little door. There had been an accident, a boat had upset and all in it had been lost; they were searching for the bodies. I asked for admittance and the policeman unlocked the door and allowed me to pass. Followed the path along the water side, and came to the crowd round the four bodies laid upon the wet meadow grass. A father, so quiet, partially gray, trim and respectable looking, a young lad in blue boating costume, a young girl in black, farther on another in whom they thought there were signs of life, and about her two doctors were working, applying a galvanic battery. The mother had been restored and was conveyed into one of the houses.
I never saw any attempts to recover a drowned person before. I wondered that they left the body lying on the damp earth in wet clothing. They told me that it might be fatal to move her before they succeeded in bringing her back to life. They tried a long time in vain, then they laid the four bodies all in a row for the coroner. The damp grass, the trampling and sympathetic crowd, the four bodies in their wet garments laid on the bank, will always rise in my memory along with my first sight of the river Lee.
Cork seems a rich city, full of business, bustle on all the wharves, buying and selling on all the streets. The buildings are very grand. Alongside the river is a long ridge rising up to a tree-crowned summit. On that hillside is tier upon tier of grand houses, grand churches, fine convents and public buildings of one kind and another. You come upon fine churches through the town in corners where you do not expect them.
The church of churches in Cork is the Protestant Cathedral, of St. Finn Barre—whoever he was. This church sits high up on a rocky foundation, its pointed spires of exquisite stone-work pierce the sky. It is not finished, scaffoldings are there, and skilled chisels and cunning hammers have been knapping and polishing there for many a day, and are likely to continue hammering and chiselling for many a day more. Inside, it is marble of Cork, marble of Connemara, marble of Italy, polished to the brightest. The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold. Before the altar, parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor. On the wall the different noble families who belong here, or have money invested here, have their shields containing their coats of arms on the wall. Into this grand church have been wrought the religious ideas of the church people for years, at the cost of L100,000, and there is an immense golden angel on the point of a gable calling with two trumpets for L25,000 more to finish it.
None but a rich city could afford the splendid buildings that are in Cork. The evening on which I arrived in Cork was signalized not only by the boat accident, but by a grand wedding, the wedding of a Sir George Colthurst in the splendid cathedral church just mentioned, and there was any amount of fashion, and high birth and young beauty gathered there. The bride was beautiful, the bride was "tall," and not yet, they say, out of her teens. She was dressed in white satin and silver cloth, Irish lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed. The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are reduced to five—perhaps that is the proportion of exaggeration in newspaper accounts of outrage generally. The newly-made bride and bridegroom went to see the wounded, leaving cordials and money at every house.
One thing is observable in Cork, the determination to make an effort to restore native industry from its present languishing condition. Passing along the streets I notice clerks in the windows affixing labels on goods with the words, "Irish Manufactures," "Cork made goods," "Blarney tweeds," "Irish blankets," "Cork made furniture." There have been meetings held on the subject since I came here. No city in the world could appear to be more quiet and law-abiding than Cork to all appearance.
As one instance of the exaggeration of reports concerning outrages, I see the disturbance in Cork that took place at the rejoicings about Sir George Colthurst's marriage advertised with the heading 20 men shot. The local report says five injured, one shot, but not fatally.