6 PEASANTRY AT WORK — ATHLONE. 



as far as the eye can reach, this seems the character of 

 Westmeath. There are many roofless houses on the 

 roadside, the inhabitants of which have been ejected. The 

 patches of tilled land around these houses generally ex- 

 hibit unmistakeable signs of the most wretched mis- 

 management. The people employed in the fields seemed 

 everywhere to take things easy. All the reapers had on 

 that apparently indispensable garment, a long-tailed 

 frieze-coat, and they certainly did not look as if their 

 work would keep them warm without it. In haymaking, 

 a good deal of which was going on, the men all worked 

 with the coat on ; indeed, I did not see a man at field- 

 work of any kind without it. Who ever saw a harvest- 

 field in Scotland, or a hay-field, with the men working 

 in long-tailed coats ? There, an Irishman strips to his 

 work in harvest, and does it well. Here, the frog- 

 like appearance of the men, with the tails of their 

 coats jerking behind them, as they bend to their work, 

 presents a striking contrast to the conduct of the same 

 men when on the other side of the Channel, under proper 

 superintendence, and with the stimulus of good wages. 



Athlone is a good town on the Shannon, a little 

 below Loughrea. The navigation from the sea at 

 Limerick by canal, loughs, and river, is nearly ready to 

 be opened. But the more direct communication by 

 railway, on the completion of the line from Dublin to Gal- 

 way, on which this town will form a principal station, will 

 render this inland navigation of secondary importance. 



Crossing the Shannon, we enter Connaught, proceed- 

 ing through part of the county of Roscommon, fourteen 

 miles, to Ballinasloe. The country here is inferior 



