. They appear in an
uncommon beauty; two seem to join, and the water which flows between
takes the appearance of a fine bay, projecting deep into a dark wood:
nothing can be more beautiful. The park hill rises above them, and the
whole is backed with mountains. The home scene at your feet also is
pretty; a lawn scattered with trees that forms the margin of the lake,
closing gradually in a thick wood of tall trees, above the tops of which
is a distant view of Cultiegh mountain, which is there seen in its
proudest solemnity.

They plough all with horses three or four in a plough, and all abreast.
Here let it be remarked that they very commonly plough and harrow with
their horses drawing by the tail: it is done every season. Nothing can
put them beside this, and they insist that, take a horse tired in traces
and put him to work by the tail, he will draw better: quite fresh again.
Indignant reader, this is no jest of mine, but cruel, stubborn, barbarous
truth. It is so all over Cavan.

At Clonells, near Castlerea, lives O'Connor, the direct descendant of
Roderick O'Connor, who was king of Connaught six or seven hundred years
ago; there is a monument of him in Roscommon Church, with his sceptre,
etc. I was told as a certainty that this family were here long before
the coming of the Milesians. Their possessions, formerly so great, are
reduced to three or four hundred pounds a year, the family having fared
in the revolutions of so many ages much worse than the O'Niels and
O'Briens. The common people pay him the greatest respect, and send him
presents of cattle, etc., upon various occasions. They consider him as
the prince of a people involved in one common ruin.

Another great family in Connaught is Macdermot, who calls himself Prince
of Coolavin. He lives at Coolavin, in Sligo, and though he has not above
one hundred pounds a year, will not admit his children to sit down in his
presence. This was certainly the case with his father, and some assured
me even with the present chief. Lord Kingsborough, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr.
O'Hara, Mr. Sandford, etc., came to see him, and his address was curious:
"O'Hara, you are welcome! Sandford, I am glad to see your mother's son"
(his mother was an O'Brien): "as to the rest of ye, come in as ye can."
Mr. O'Hara, of Nymphsfield, is in possession of a considerable estate in
Sligo, which is the remains of great possessions they had in that
country. He is one of the few descendants of