1828.7] Moral and Physical Forcé of Ireland. 4183 
little difference from the northern. Its arable and pasture lands are much 
more fertile. In many places they are as minutely divided. In others, not so 
much—affording extensive feeding for cattle. But its mountains, its interior 
waters, and its sea-inlets, are as strongly marked with defensive features as 
most portions of the globe. 
« There remains, of Ireland, a centre portion, which presents a different 
‘ surface from either the northern or the southern divisions. Although not so 
_. level as the States of Holland or the Netherlands, the space from Dublin east- 
: ward, to Galway westward, does not produce the bold and rocky eminences 
which have been already described. Where the district approaches to a 
level, it is extensively boggy, as in portions of the King’s and Queen’s Coun- 
: ties, and the County of Kildare: or where it rises into firm ground, becomes 
' a tissue of intersections, from the divisions of what is called the cottier popu- 
‘ lation. Add to these artificial intersections, that, even with the arable and 
pasture grounds, are minutely interwoven small ramifications of the greater 
bogs—all these boggy portions impervious to cavalry and to artillery, and, 
if not totally impassable, extremely embarrassing to any infantry, attempting 
to act as regulars. Cavalry, from the intersections of ditches, and the fre- 
qpeney of bogs and mountains, may be considered as an almost useless arm in 
reland. 
“ Travelling still westward, new forms and new modes of division arise. 
The river Shannon may be said to insulate the western province from the 
rest of Ireland. Rising, towards the north, in the Leitrim mountains, those 
mountains, presenting insurmountable difficulty to a regular army (preserving 
at least its regular formations), it surrounds the whole western province to 
Loup-Head, its southern termination on the Atlantic. The western side of 
the Shannon presents, in many places, a surface for defence, to be seen in very 
few countries. A spectator, standing on the level, sees before him an exten- 
sion for miles exhibiting nothing but a stony continuation of that level. Upon 
advancing into the apparently stony desert, he finds it composed of inmumerable 
detached pieces of rock, almost all of equal height (evidently of alluvious 
formation), rising above the level of the soil, and inclosing, in their inter- 
stices, small patches of ground, covered with the richest pasture of the king- 
dom. Here, almost innumerable flocks of sheep are nourished by the inter- 
stitial herbage, and sheltered by the surrounding rocks. No regular army 
could, in its advance, among the stony defenders, preserve its formation, either 
in line or in column. It seems as if these surfaces were formed by the genius 
himself of modern and western war, for the exercise and safety of the rifleman. 
In these interstices, each rifleman would find a little redoubt, fitted by nature 
for the traverse of his rifle, and for the security of his person. No artillery 
can, in point-blank range, touch him at all. If howitzer practice with shells 
should be made use of, an accidental shell may fall within the little fortress 
of a rifleman: but, even from its explosion, it can carry its mischief no fur- 
ther—a moment of time, also, would give to the rifleman an opportunity of 
evasion into another and adjoining barrier.” 
+  ) ee ae VE 
The rivers, lakes, valleys, roads, come next under observation. We 
select the remarks on the roads :— 
“The roads through Ireland are numerous and excellent. This circum- 
_ stance, at the first contemplation, would seem greatly to facilitate the march 
ofa regular army, with all its matériel. But these roads are of a peculiar 
character. They resemble not the old Roman structures of the Appian and 
Flaminian ways, nor their modern imitations on some parts of the continent— 
viz. a strong and heavily paved causeway in the centre, with open spaces at 
the sides. The Irish roads are raised from a softer material—small limestone 
gravel, or limestone rock, broken into a gravel size. The plan of the road- 
makers of the modern roads in Ireland, has been to carry them, as much 
as possible, through the level parts of the island—through the inter- 
mingled bog and arable of the 6 a winding with the course of the 
