n
evil which oppresses them cruelly, and certainly has its origin in its
landlords when they set their farms, setting all the cabins with them,
instead of keeping them tenants to themselves. The oppression is, the
farmer valuing the labour of the poor at fourpence or fivepence a day,
and paying that in land rated much above its value. Owing to this the
poor are depressed; they live upon potatoes and sour milk, and the
poorest of them only salt and water to them, with now and then a herring.
Their milk is bought; for very few keep cows, scarce any pigs, but a few
poultry. Their circumstances are incomparably worse than they were
twenty years ago; for they had all cows, but then they wore no linen: all
now have a little flax. To these evils have been owing emigrations,
which have been considerable.

To the west of Tralee are the Mahagree Islands, famous for their corn
products; they are rock and sand, stocked with rabbits; near them a sandy
tract, twelve miles long, and one mile broad, to the north, with the
mountains to the south, famous for the best wheat in Kerry; all under the
plough.

Arriving at Ardfert, Lord Crosby, whose politeness I have every reason to
remember, was so obliging as to carry me by one of the finest strands I
ever rode upon, to view the mouth of the Shannon at Ballengary, the site
of an old fort. It is a vast rock, separated from the country by a chasm
of prodigious depth, through which the waves drive. The rocks of the
coast here are in the boldest style, and hollowed by the furious Atlantic
waves into caverns in which they roar. It was a dead calm, yet the swell
was so heavy, that the great waves rolled in and broke upon the rocks
with such violence as to raise an immense foam, and give one an idea of
what a storm would be; but fancy rarely falls short in her pictures. The
view of the Shannon is exceedingly noble; it is eight miles over, the
mouth formed by two headlands of very high and bold cliffs, and the reach
of the river in view very extensive; it is an immense scenery: perhaps
the noblest mouth of a river in Europe.

Ardfert is very near the sea, so near it that single trees or rows are
cut in pieces with the wind, yet about Lord Glendour's house there are
extensive plantations exceedingly flourishing, many fine ash and beech;
about a beautiful Cistercian abbey, and a silver fir of forty-eight
years' growth, of an immense height and size.

October 3. Left Ardfert, accompanying