ng of the
"Majestic" was cabled to the Lloyds of Liverpool and London and back to
New York, via Valentia Bay, and it was known that evening in Harrisville
that the Harris family were safely nearing Queenstown.

Travelers experience delightful feelings as the old world is approached
for the first time. All that has been read or told, and half believed, is
now felt to be true, and you are delighted that you are so soon to see
for yourself the "Mother Islands," and Europe which have peopled the
western world with sons and daughters.

With the precision of the New York and Jersey City ferries the ocean
steamers enter the harbors of the old and new world. On the southwestern
coast of Ireland is Bantry Bay, memorable in history as having been twice
entered by the French navy for the purpose of invading Ireland. In sight
is Valentia, the British terminus of the first Atlantic cable to North
America, also the terminus of the cables laid in 1858, 1865, and 1866,
and of others since laid. The distance is 1635 miles from Valentia Bay
to St. John, Newfoundland.

From the deck of the steamer, Ireland seems old and worn. Her rocky capes
and mountainous headlands reach far into the ever encroaching Atlantic
like the bony fingers of a giant. Fastnet Rock lighthouse on the right,
telling the mariner of half-sunken rocks, and Cape Clear on the left,
soon drop behind.

Approaching Queenstown, the green forests and fields and little white
homes of fishermen and farmers are visible along the receding shore.
Roach's Point, four miles from Queenstown is reached, where the mails are
landed and received, if the weather is bad, but Captain Morgan decided
to steam into Queenstown Harbor, one of the finest bays in the world,
being a sheltered basin of ten square miles, and the entrance strongly
fortified. Within the harbor are several islands occupied by barracks,
ordnance and convict depots, and powder magazines. This deep and
capacious harbor can float the navies of the world. In beauty it compares
favorably with the Bay of Naples.

Cove, or Queenstown, as Cove is called, since the visit of Queen Victoria
in 1849, has a population of less than ten thousand. It is situated on
the terraced and sheltered south side of Great Island. Here for his
health came Rev. Charles Wolfe, author of "Not a drum was heard, not a
funeral note."

In the amphitheatre-shaped town on parallel streets rise tiers of white
stone houses, relieved by spire and tower