PAST AND PRESENT. 313 



Generally, they are undersized and by no means so good- 

 looking as their southern neighbours and I would say, in 

 other points they are equally deficient. To overcome their 

 early lounging gait and slovenly habits, is found by military 

 men a troublesome task ; and while the Tipperary man 

 speedily passes through the hands of the drill-sergeant, the 

 Mayo peasant requires a long and patient ordeal, before a 

 martial carriage can be acquired, and he be perfectly set-up 

 as a soldier. These defects once conquered, none are better 

 calculated for the profession. Hardy, active, patient in 

 wet and cold, and accustomed to indifferent and irregular 

 food, he is admirably adapted to endure the privations and 

 fatigue incident to a soldier's life on active service and 

 in dash and daring, no regiments in the service hold a 

 prouder place than those which appertain to the kingdom 

 of Connaught. 



It is said that the physical appearance of the Irish 

 peasantry deteriorates as the northern and western sea-coasts 

 are approached ; and, certainly, on the latter the population 

 are very inferior to that of the adjacent counties. Even the 

 inhabitants of different baronies in the same county, as their 

 locality advances inland, will be found to differ materially ; 

 and in an extensive cattle-fair, the islander will be as easily 

 distinguished from the borderer, whether he be on the Gal way 

 or Roscommon frontier, as from the stock-master of Leinster, 

 or the jobber from the North. 



Indeed, fifty years back, the communication between the 

 islands and the interior was so difficult and unfrequent, that 

 the respective occupants looked on each other as very 

 strangers. Naturally, slowly as civilization crept westward, 

 the islands and remoter coasts, from local causes, were last 

 visited, and many curious circumstances to this day would 

 prove it. In this age of machinery, when the minutest 

 matters are produced by its agencies, and the lowest occu- 

 pations of human labour are transacted by powers unknown 

 to our fathers, there are extensive tracts upon the western 

 portions of the island, where even a mill has never been 

 erected, and where the corn is prepared for distillation or 

 food by the same rude methods used by barbarous nations 

 one thousand years ago. Trituration between two stones, 

 by the hand labour of an individual, is the means employed 

 to reduce the corn into meal ; and the use of that ancient 



