The Weather Has Been So Inclement, The Days All So Much Alike, Rain, Hail, Snow, Sleet, High Winds, And We Were So Busy Coughing That The Days Slipped By Almost Unnoticed.

Refusing the tempting offer of a free trip to see the beauties of Glengarriff, through the medium of a heavy rain we started for Derry by train.

Ah! it does know how to rain in Ireland. Such a downpour, driven aslant by a fierce wind, so that, disregarding the thought of an umbrella, we held on to the rail of the jaunting car and were driven in the teeth of the tempest, smiling as if we enjoyed it, up to the station.

Both sides of the road at the station were crowded with men in all sorts of picturesque habiliments. If it had been near the poor-house we would have thought that the population was applying for admittance _en masse_. As it was, seeing the station likewise crowded, the platform beyond crammed, all eager, expectant, waiting on something, we thought it was some renowned field preacher going to give a sermon, or a millionaire going to give largess. Not a bit of it. It was some person, idle and cruel, who was bringing a couple of poor captive deer to be hunted, and the hounds to hunt them, and the immense crowd represented the idle and cruel who had assembled to get a glimpse of this noble and elevating diversion. If it were possible for the deer and the man to change places the crowd would be still more delighted.

Leaving Ballymena behind we panted through a completely sodden country. Everything was dripping. In many places the waters were out, and the low-lying lands were in a flood. Potatoes in pits linger in the fields, turnips and cabbages in the rows where they grew, bearing witness that even the last hard winter was many degrees behind the winters of Canada. The land on this road is not so good as what I left behind; therefore there were few gentlemen's houses, and the small farmhouses wore the usual poverty-stricken and neglected appearance. There were more waste hillsides devoted to whins, and flat fields tussocked with rushes as we swept on through the dripping country, under the sides of almost perpendicular rocks, down which little waterfalls, like spun silver, fell and broadened into bridal veils ere they reached the bottom. Then along the historical Foyle, "whose swelling waters," rather muddy at this season of the year, "roll northward to the main," and so following its windings and curvings we flashed into Derry.

VI.

THE HILLS OF LOUGH SWILLY - TENANTS' IMPROVEMENTS - A MAN-OF-WAR AND MEN OF LOVE - THE PIG - RAMELTON - INTELLIGENT ROOKS - FROM POTATOES AND MILK TO CORNMEAL STIRABOUT AND NOTHING - MILFORD - THE LATE LORD LEITRIM'S INJUSTICE AND INHUMANITY - ACCOUNT OF HIS DEATH.

On the 14th March we left Derry by train, crossing from the banks of the Foyle to Lough Swilly. Got on board a little steamer, marvellously like an American puffer, and panted and throbbed across the waters of the Lough.

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