The formation of the coast for several miles each side of the Causeway is the same volcanic rock, and it rises abruptly hundreds of feet high from the sea. Caves and caverns with arches and vaults and echoes, and natural amphitheatres with the pipe organ Fin used to play and the bathtub which he used, are visited by the visitors who go out upon the Atlantic in a row-boat. I have seen Niagara and the Falls of the Rhine, and the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, and a few hundred more wonderful works of Nature or of giants, and the Causeway is not second to any of them.
Our last stop in Ireland is this town of Londonderry, known in Ireland as “Derry.” The London end of the name was put on by King James the First, who was so devoted to his religion that he killed or exiled the Catholic Irish in Ulster and Derry and gave their lands to Protestant emigrants from England. A few years later Cromwell finished the job and got the name of “Thorough,” because of his theory that the only good Irishman was a dead Irishman. There were terrible religious wars in Ireland for years, each side getting even for outrages committed by the other. One great event in the series was the siege of Londonderry by an Irish army under James the Second, who had been run out of England by William of Orange. James was about to enter the city with the consent of the governor, when thirteen apprentice boys banged down the portcullis, closing the entrance. That started the fight, and the people of Londonderry decided to stand the siege. They repulsed the soldiers and James tried to starve ’em out. The siege, which began with no preparation for defense, lasted seven months, and half the population died of starvation. The people ate dogs and cats and rats, a rat selling for three shillings. At last an English fleet broke through the obstruction in the river, and the remnant of the people of Londonderry was saved.
Those were “good old times.” The Protestants of Londonderry knew if they surrendered they would meet the same fate that they had accorded to the Catholics on the capture of Irish towns, and there is hardly a town in Ireland which cannot duplicate the story of the siege of Londonderry. Those days are gone, Irish and English have laid aside their weapons, and except for St. Patrick’s Day or the 12th of July, which is the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne in which William defeated James, there is hardly a broken head in the country from religious causes.
The walls still stand in Londonderry, and some of the cannon of 1689 are mounted at the old stand. But the walls are now a promenade and the cannon are only relics. A Protestant cathedral and a Catholic cathedral, a Presbyterian college and a Catholic college, are doing business side by side, and all are doing good. Two steamship lines have made Derry a regular stop on their way from Glasgow to America. The principal business of the town is the manufacture of linen and whisky, most of which is exported to the United States. And Irishmen from the North of the isle, who want an opportunity and a chance, come to Derry on their way to the best land of all, discovered by the Spanish, developed by the English, and ruled generally by the Irish, known and loved as home now by more Irish than are in Ireland, the U. S. A.
Scotland and the Scotch
Glasgow, Scotland, September 7.
Scotland is one of the oldest countries of the civilized world. Although it is now united with England and is a part of Great Britain, up to two hundred years ago it had nothing to do with the English except to fight them. The original inhabitants were Celts, and came into history as Picts and Scots, who held possession of the northern part of the country when the Romans conquered England. After the Romans went away the Saxons arrived and practically wiped out all the old Britons in England, but made no headway against the Caledonians or “people of the hills,” as they called the residents of the north. About the ninth century the various tribes were gotten together under one chief or king, and from that time until the union of England and Scotland in 1706 the chief occupation of the Scotch was to fight the English, who were always trying to conquer Scotland, but never succeeding. The Scotch and the English were of different race, language, customs and habits. Much of Scotland, the Highlands, has little room for agriculture, and the people lived a roving life, raising a few sheep and oats, and, whenever they felt like it, making a raid into the Lowlands and into England and bringing back cattle and supplies to last them until the next raid. They were converted to Christianity, but their idea of morality never included an injunction against killing the Lowlander and running off his herd. War was the name under which nations concealed their crimes of robbery, and the Highlanders of Scotland had war all the time; so they were officially justified. When you analyze their romantic history and the great deeds of their heroes you will always find that no matter how strict their character and honor among themselves, they never considered it anything but a praiseworthy action to kill and rob an Englishman. The reformation by John Knox and his contemporaries filled the Scottish heads with religious enthusiasm and devotion, but it did not interfere with the Scottish theory that the English were the natural enemy who must always be fought. And the English, on their side, reciprocated the regard in which they were held by the Scotch, and every king of England who had a chance put in his time trying to conquer the clansmen. Often the English would defeat the Scotch armies and capture their chiefs, but they couldn’t any more hold the Scotch territory than they could hold the red-hot end of a poker.