You can also get the
never-varying chop or steak served up with another variety of miserable
cooking, but you cannot get a bit of fish any more than if the sea were
five hundred miles off instead of lapping on the rocks less than a perch
away. Was pulled across the Sound by two young girls, who handled the
big oars as if they were used to them, and urged the boat with its load
of men across the green waters very swiftly with their strong white
arms. As we neared the island of Achill trees were conspicuous by their
absence, and purple heather was plentiful.
Achill island is a treeless place. There are mountains beyond mountains
lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes
lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary
expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us
and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and
most horrible habitations. We passed the plantation, noticeable because
there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his
fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches,
birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes;
great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms
that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr. Pike has
already made for himself a delicious looking home amid this barren
waste. It enriched our eyes to look at it.
Mr. Pike and Mr. Stoney, of the castellated new building down at the
edge of Clew Bay, have the distinction of being the most unpopular
landlords in this part of the country. After we passed Mr. Pike's place
there were no more trees. The houses are very bad indeed; the cattle in
the pasture are of the small native breed, and have little appearance of
milk; the sheep are very miserable and scraggy. I have often heard of
Cook's recipes saying, "Take the scrag end of a piece of mutton." These
recipes must have emanated from Achill Island, where the mutton must be
pretty much all scrag.
After we drove a long way - what appeared a long way - I do not believe
they measure all the crooks and turns this most serpentine of roads into
the miles - we passed establishment of lay brothers called the Monastery.
There is quite a block of white buildings, and a good many reclaimed
fields, green with the young crops, lie in the valley below them. There
is a bell in a cupola that will call to work and worship, and a chapel
where they meet to pray. The valley where their fields lie stretches to
the sea, and in the bay lay a smack of some kind by which they trade to
Westport.
