All these houses
are called castles, and castles they are compared with the cabins. The
land around it did not seem very good. There was something pathetic in
the evident attempt to keep up lordly state on a poor income and off
poor soil. Happy America, whose people are not compelled by the
inexorable logic of circumstances to be lords, but can be plain farmers.
It is really a hard thing to be a lord sometimes, when a place is sunk
with mortgages, and burdened with legacies and annuities, and no means
of redemption but the rents and these stopped.
We drove back the way we came. Ascending the hill we met a little beast,
so small, so black and shaggy, that I thought at first it was one of our
Canadian black bears. I asked what it was, and - laughing at my
ignorance - the man told me that it was a Highland Kyloe, one of the
famous black cattle that I have heard so much about, but had never seen
a specimen of the breed before. It would have been big for a bear, but
certainly was small for a cow, while a goat has the appearance of giving
as much milk.
XLIII.
CONG
The land as we neared Cong, between Cong and Lough Mask, as seen from
the rather roundabout road we travelled, has a very peculiar appearance.
It is stony with a very different stoniness from any part of Ireland
which I had seen before.
