116 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



they are too absorbed in whale talk. My cousin left desk, 

 and shoots, and engagements, to come with us to the Irish 

 shore to see us as far as Belfast, and to go over our business 

 papers, but pipes and whale talk and more pipes and more 

 whale talk, and minute examination of the engines, seem more 

 to their taste at the moment than business papers by lamp- 

 light. Belfast docks will be more the place for business than 

 the Sound of Islay, with Jura and the day fading and a night 

 full of the yellow light of the harvest moon. A joyous change 

 for the family lawyer, is it not from the city to the coast he 

 dreams of in town from the busy office to the quiet of the 

 Highlands and islands from affairs of companies to the 

 picking up of the lights on Islay and the Mull of Cantire ? 

 We hoped for his sake to see a killer at least, or something to 

 fire one of the guns at several finners have been seen lately 

 on the Scottish coast. But as the morning dawned it grew 

 rough with thick haze, and it was all we could do to pick up 

 Black Ness and then the entrance to Belfast Lough. We are 

 not proud, so we took a pilot and felt our minds at rest as we 

 steered up the three miles of buoys which mark the channel 

 almost as close as lamp-posts in a street. 



If you have not seen Belfast I give you my word that the 

 first impression is astonishing. You can hardly believe you 

 are not dreaming. The iron network of building leviathans 

 in course of construction is overpowering, enormous, so vast 

 is the perspective of not merely one or two great iron ghosts, 

 but streets of them, high as buildings in New York, one be- 

 yond the other on either side of the river, fading into smoke 

 and distance, and the noise of iron hammering and banging 

 is universal, so all-pervading that you hear yourself speak 

 quite easily. We felt like a mere speck crawling up the grey 

 river. By-and-by we noticed little mites moving about in 

 these gigantic structures of iron filigree-work, high up on 

 stagings, or higher still on vast cranes, up in the sky ; these 

 were men, twenty-six thousand of them in one yard alone ! 

 We met them later, in marching order, hefty fellows, blue- 

 eyed, drilled Ulster Irishmen, stronger looking than Scots- 

 men. Later on we saw them sign their National Covenant. 



These are descendants of the people who gave Scotland its 



