296 CENTRAL IRELAND 



Mountains. The small grass farms seemed to be 

 more prosperous and were dependent upon the sale of 

 milk and store cattle. At Clogheen we turned due 

 south and boldly attacked the pass leading at a con- 

 siderable elevation through the bare but shapely 

 Knockmeledown Mountains ; but the road turned out 

 to be carefully graded and presented no real difficulties. 

 The summits are wild, desolate moorland, but the 

 descent on the southern slope soon drops into an 

 exquisite river valley, where the luxuriant woodland 

 and the red rocks, bedraped with ferns, speak of the 

 soft, kindly climate of the south of Ireland and the 

 moisture-laden airs that blow in from the Atlantic. 

 The valley brought us to Lismore, with its noble castle 

 overhanging the Blackwater, one of the show towns 

 of Ireland, where the trim aspect and air of an English 

 residential town indicate the neighbourhood of a great 

 proprietor. From Lismore to Cork one passes through 

 an undulating country of which the greater part is 

 in grass, though nearly all of the farms possess a 

 certain proportion of tillage land that may be described 

 as fairly well farmed and yielding crops somewhat 

 above the general average of Ireland. 



Approaching Middleton, we visited one or two farms 

 which showed much the same general character ; the 

 holdings run about 5 acres in area, of which about 

 one-fifth would be under crop, and the rest permanent 

 grass or seeds that are left down for three or four 

 years, so that the cropping always succeeds to the 

 fertility accumulated by a well-established sod. Barley 

 and oats form the cereals chiefly grown, and potatoes 

 occupy rather less of the root-land than the other 

 crops, instead of greatly exceeding them as they do in 

 most of the Irish counties. Milk is the staple pro- 

 duction, and we passed by the depots of a condensed 



