XV 



THE WESTERN SEABOARD: RESETTLEMENT 

 AND CO-OPERATION 



FROM Limerick we struck west into Clare, but there, 

 as in Connemara, Mayo, and Donegal, farming may be 

 said hardly to exist. The characteristic feature of 

 Clare is the limestone rock, which covers, as a rule, 

 more of the land than the grass. Here and there are 

 areas amenable to cultivation, as for example the 

 kindly land about Oranmore just south of the city of 

 Galway, where on a limited area some of the best 

 barley in Ireland is grown, but, speaking generally, the 

 mountainous west is covered by rock and bog. In 

 places it still carries an incredibly large population, 

 living, as one resident told us, largely on American 

 postal orders, but struggling with heart-breaking little 

 patches of cultivated land won from the wilderness. 

 The potatoes have to be grown on lazy beds to raise 

 them above the level of the saturated peat, and despite 

 the spraying that has become universal are subject to 

 a number of other diseases of appalling intensity in 

 that soft moisture-laden atmosphere. Cultivation on 

 more than a garden scale must be a mistake under 

 such conditions ; the only economic use of the land 

 would be to keep it in extensive grazings for ponies, 

 sheep, or rough cattle, and some of the lower land 

 could be profitably improved by the use of lime and 

 basic slag. Such grazing can only support a small 

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