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CHAPTER IX. KYLEMORE.
THE scenery on leaving Clifden is for a time bleak and monotonous, but soon becomes varied and beautiful. You pass, by Streamstown and Ballinakill, through the pleasant village with its pretty cottages, fuchsia-hedges, and general look of neatness and comfort, which it owes to Mr. Ellis, an English resident, and who, (so it was told to me, as our friend Herodotus hath it) is much respected, although a Quaker, by the Roman Catholics around. Between this place and Kylemore, you enter upon one of the grandest scenes, to my taste, to be found in all Connamara, a kind of mountain pass, with the rocks rising to a great height, in huge blocks and broken masses, piled one above another, and sometimes jutting over the road in fearful contiguity, densely timbered from base to summit, the gray stone contrasting beautifully with the bright green foliage of the trees. Here the eagles build, and had become so numerous, (so our driver said), that the owner had had recourse to poison. It sounded awfully in our ears, like trapping a fox or shooting an albatross; and, surely, if the king of birds must be slain (and I cannot deny that his majesty's conduct, in perpetually flying off with lambs, is open to some criticism) he might fall more nobly to the rifle of the sportsman.
We reached the solitary inn by Kylemore Lake for luncheon; and I purposely make these memoranda about meals, and take my time from the kitchen clock, because the delightful air of Connamara very speedily induces that vacuum, which nature and the tourist yearn to fill. So Frank and I danced in triumph around our undisputed lobster, Blades languishing at Clifden, and a fellow passenger, who had stopped at Kylemore, and whom, being almost hairless, we distinguished as “Balder the Beautiful,” having previously lunched, as we came along, upon the largest biscuit I ever met with, and which, when he first produced it, we both of us mistook for a Fox-and-Goose board. Contemplating the shell and other débris, in a state of placid plethora, and reflecting, in a spirit of tooth-pick philosophy, what a glorious economy it would be for us undergraduates, and what a grim despair for the tailors, if we, like the lobster, could annually cast our clothing, and reappear, as he does, in customary suit of solemn black, without any pecuniary investment,—I was startled by the wild conduct of Francis, who, suddenly springing from his chair, and favouring me with a slap upon the back, which immediately induced a determination of bitter beer to the head, exclaimed, at the very apex of his voice, “And now, old cock, for a salmon!” Forthwith he entered into solemn consultation with our worthy host, Mr. Duncan, and produced for his inspection a small library of Fly-books. Alas, the inspector looked grave and shook his head, as an examiner surveying infirm Latin. “One or two might raise a fish;” but this was said in a tone, which quite convinced me, that, unless Frank should come across a salmon, which happened to be helplessly drunk, his entomological specimens would be treated with most profound contempt. What was to be done? Mr. D.'s own flies had been stolen, during a recent illness, by his visitors; and, indeed, as they were kept, with true Irish liberality, in the hall of the inn, one can scarcely wonder at the felonious fact. But he was determined, the weather being most propitious, and the lake full of “fish,” (not to mention the white trout, of which there is abundance) that Frank should not be disappointed, and forthwith commenced the operation, most interesting to me who had never seen it, of “tying a fly.” He began with a bare hook, a piece of fishing gut, and a few bits of silk and feathers; and lo, in about three minutes, there issued from his consummate manipulation a gorgeous fly, so beautiful, and, withal, so plump and appetising, that for a salmon to see it was to look and die. Then armed with a gaff, which would have landed a sturgeon, or made a glorious pastoral staff for His Grace the Archbishop of Brobdingnag, and which was borne before him, as the crozier of Saint Grellen was carried before the tribes of Hy-Many, when, ages ago, they conquered here in Connaught, away went Frank to his boat; and I, rodless, to wander, wondering, among the great mountains and to cull a bouquet of ferns and flowers. This I had just arranged satisfactorily, and was thinking how admirably that little wayside rush (epiphorum), with its snow-white silky flag, would serve for some Lilliputian clerk of the course to drop before a ruck of fairy jocks, and start them for a Queen Mab's Plate, when a ringing shout in the distance, which might have been emitted by a triumphant fox-hunter, or by an Indian scalping his foe, drew my attention to the lake, and I could see dear old Frank standing in the boat, and holding up a glorious salmon, with its silver scales glittering in the sun.
