36 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



Up into the west we went, along a road hilly 

 and pastoral, lonely and hot. After some miles 

 of it we dived into a fir-grove and emerged into 

 a region of a strangely different sort. Connemara 

 it might have been — the back of Connemara by the 

 Erriff river — such and of such a greenness were 

 the hills ; so amongst them, along the marshy 

 level, ran the unfenced road. Not a tree broke 

 the tender barrenness of the outlines : big and 

 mild, with the magnanimous curves of the brows 

 of an elephant, the hills stood clothed in the sweet 

 short grass ; and among their hollows grazed sheep 

 and black cattle, whose smallness may have been 

 native, or may have been a deception of that 

 great feeding-ground. We halted there in breezy 

 silences where no horse-fly inhabited, and had an 

 afternoon tea of patriarchal frugality, — a bunch 

 of raisins and a crust of bread cut with Miss 

 O'Flannigan's pocket-knife, which had last been 

 used for scraping out a tin of soft-soap. 



The country closed in round us as we journeyed. 

 Ravines clove the hills, woods ran hardily on the 



