CHEOPS IN CONNEMARA 27 



boundary, its farthest ridges fading into haze, its 

 nearer hollows seamed with a black or green swampi- 

 ness ; and far and near, sunk in the heather or cresting 

 the slopes, lie weather-whitened boulders, scattered 

 supine, like a fossil herd of cattle. In the complete 

 absence of any other thing to look at, a good deal 

 of time is spent in speculating as to what kind of 

 eruptive effort or watery subsidence strewed the 

 country over with these improbable rocks; and as 

 the car jolts along the levels and crawls over the short 

 ridges, the problem becomes so oppressive that a 

 wish is almost formed for the presence of the abhorred 

 schoolboy and his geology primer. The carman 

 gives it as his opinion that " thim was in it since the 

 race of man " ; but this is clearly impromptu, a credit- 

 able attempt to meet a question never before imagined. 

 His next piece of information is that just half of this 

 desert has been crossed; but by what subtlest 

 recognition he is aware of it, it is hard to imagine. 

 Around lie the dead monotonies, the misty, deceptive 

 horizon, so bare of incident and so bereft of life that 

 the thin road flung across its undulations has some- 

 thing of the vigour and solitary daring of a line of rails 

 in Central Asian steppes; or even, with long looking 

 at, comes to mean a living creature traversing an 

 enchanted land. 



But as the horse surmounts the slope from which 

 this survey has been made, there appears, in the 

 hollow beyond, an object as unexpected as one of 

 these boulders of rock would be in Bond Street. It 

 is a small house, immaculately whitewashed and 

 slated, standing out from the side of the hill with the 

 wind singing everlastingly about its roof, and snatching 

 away its thread of turf smoke before it can humanise 

 the landscape. Above its brilliant green door a 

 board with the legend " National School " tells 



