d, being conspicuous. ~Straffan~ may be called a
"hunting village," as the meets of the famous "Killing Kildares" most
usually take place in its neighbourhood. Here, too, are the seats of
Lords Cloncurry and Mayo. The thriving market town of ~Naas~ is two
miles from Sallins, and is the railway station for Punchestown, the
great steeplechase meeting of the Kildare Hunt. Long centuries ago it
was an historic spot--"Naas of the Kings." From the station may be seen
the Hill of Allen, rising like a sentinel on the mearings of the "Great
Plain of Ireland." ~Harristown~, the second station on a branch line, is
about three miles from Poulaphouca Waterfall. The road to the Falls
leads through the picturesque village of Ballymore-Eustace, situated on
a bank at a bend in the river Liffey. The view from the river below the
Falls is very impressive. Tullow is the terminus of this branch of the
line. It is a good business town, and the river Slaney affords excellent
trout fishing. Within half-an-hour's walk from Sallins is Bodenstown
Churchyard, where Theobald Wolfe Tone, the founder of the United Irish
Organisation of 1798, is buried. He was the most desperate man who ever
crossed the path of the English Government in Ireland. "The most
extraordinary man I ever met," is the verdict of the Duke of Wellington.
"He went to France with but one hundred guineas in his pocket, and
induced Bonaparte, by his single unaided efforts, to send three
armaments to Ireland." Six and twenty miles from Dublin, the town of
~Newbridge~ exists as a kind of aide-de-camp to the Commissariat
Department of the ~Curragh Camp~. The Curragh, a great plain over twelve
miles square, was once a common, the property of the Geraldine tenants,
but the Crown quietly seized upon it, and "their right there is none to
dispute." It has been made a camp of instruction, and can accommodate,
under more or less permanent cover, ten thousand men. It is in a good
fox-hunting, sporting country, "the country of the short grass," and
several times a year is the scene of race meetings. It is the Newmarket
of Ireland, for here are the training stables for Punchestown,
Fairyhouse, Leopardstown, Baldoyle, and all the lesser meetings in the
Green Isle, and many of the greater ones across the water. The Curragh
was the scene of more than one battle in centuries past, and, like Tara,
was one of the historic places chosen in the minds of the insurgents of
Ninety-eight as an ideal mustering