1846. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
11 
NOTES OF TRAVEL IN IRELAND.No. II. 
RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL. 
Deeply interested as we have been by the perusal of 
the second number of our correspondent’s “ Notes of 
Travel in Ireland,” we find ourselves compelled to cur¬ 
tail them somewhat, in order to dispose of his letter in 
a single number of our paper. It is dated at Dublin, 
March, 3845, and opens with the following account of 
an 
IRISH FARMER’S BREAKFAST. 
L. Tucker, Esq.— If I recollect rightly, I closed my 
last letter to you as I entered the breakfast-room in 
Smiihfield. Allow me now to lead you to the breakfast- 
table, and introduce you to its company. At the head 
of the table was seated the elegant and accomplished 
mistress of the house, the wife of one of the partners 
of the firm; and at the foot, presided two of her daugh¬ 
ters, that in appearance and manner, would in my 
opinion have graced any situation in which chance or 
fortune could have placed them; I involuntarily thought 
to myself, what a valuable importation one of them 
would be to my country, as an American farmer’s wife! 
The table was laid for about twenty, which I under¬ 
stood was usually filled at least three times in succession 
every market morning. The ladies at either end, dis¬ 
tributed black and green tea, and chocolate, at the 
choice of the persons they served, (but coffee was not on 
their catalogue) ; in the center were two very neat and 
ornamental metal stands, for boiling eggs, which were 
constantly kept replenished, and needed it too, from the 
numbers used; around was placed loaves of “light” 
bread, at least one day old, with nice French rolls, of 
the same age; and here and there, interspersed with 
coolers of the finest fresh butter, were neat silver racks 
filled with cold dry toast; this comprised the whole of 
the eatables and drinkables, on the breakfast table. Not 
an atom of meat nor a bite of hot bread was there to be 
seen; yet all eat heartily, and were the most healthy 
and ruddy looking set of men, both old and young, that 
I ever before saw congregated together. I must not 
forget to mention, though, that on a side-table was placed 
a huge sirloin of roast beef, a monster round of cold 
corned beef, and one of the finest cold corned beef 
tongues ( neat's tongue as it is here called,) that I ever 
saw, which, with a large silver mustard pot well filled, 
a jug of fine sparkling old ale overflowing, and a few 
Irish potatoes baked in their jackets, formed the reserve- 
table for those gentlemen who had ridden some ten or 
twelve Irish miles before daylight into market; (recol¬ 
lect their miles, like their hearts, are larger than the 
English, the proportion being as eleven to fourteen;) 
and they were not a few, judging by the number that 
paid their respects to this last described table. 
I was here most forcibly struck with the difference 
between those people and ourselves. Although all in 
the room were men of business and of the same pursuits, 
yet not one word was spoken on business; not a 1 dollar 
or a cent escaped their lips. Each one seemed to vie 
with the other in the raciness and point of his joke, at 
the expense of his neighbor, in which the mother and 
daughters joined with all their hearts and souls; all was 
mirth and jollity, and all seemed to me as of one family, 
I being the only individual to whom “Mr.” was ap¬ 
plied, the others familiarly addressing each other by 
their given names, which made me for some time feel 
as “a stranger in a strange land.” Business was reserv¬ 
ed to be spoken of, and attended to, in its proper place, 
and in the absence of the ladies. 
In the course of half an hour I was successively in¬ 
troduced to some 40 or 50 gentlemen, the elite of the 
graziers and farmers of Kildare, Meath and Dublin. 
You may judge the pleasure I derived from this, when 
I tell you that fully one-third of them were the ac¬ 
quaintances and cotemporaries of my father; everyone 
gave me a pressing invitation to his home, conveyed in 
such language that I could not mistake it for meaning 
else than what it said. Many were the questions asked 
respecting my country. I discovered that every one 
had some near friend or relative in America. They 
astonished me however, by the little they knew of oui 
country, its localities, or institutions. Though ele¬ 
gantly educated and well informed men otherwise, they 
were entirely ignorant on these points; yet I could say 
that the Irish hold America second only in their love and 
i respect, to their own dear native soil. 
PHOENIX PARK, DUBLIN. 
Our correspondent left Dublin on a visit to Mr. John 
Rorke, at Finstown, about six miles from that city. 
Of what he says of the route thither, we can make 
room for the following only: 
Quitting Barrack-street, we left the great western 
mail coach road, and entered the Pheenix Park, in which 
is the country residence of the Lord Lieutenant, through 
a beautiful entrance formed of two pair-s of iron gates, 
so constructed that the carriages going out should not 
come in contact with the others coming in. On either 
side is a neat cottage, called here “ Lodges,” in which 
two of the Rangers or Game-Keepers of the Park re¬ 
side with their families. We then got on high, but per¬ 
fectly level ground, and passed for fully three miles 
across this Park., on a fine, smooth, and McAdamised 
road, having below us in the valley, a full view of the 
Liffey, the Old-Man’s Hospital, Island Bridge, the ex¬ 
tensive Artillery barracks adjoining, Kilmainham Pri¬ 
son, the beautifully arranged and capacious Portobello- 
barracks, with a partial peep at the Penitentiary in 
which O'Connell and his associates were confined. In 
the back ground, extending in width some six to eight 
miles, is a gently rising plain, green at all seasons as 
are our fields in May, thickly studded with country re¬ 
sidences, chiefly of the gentry of the city, the grounds 
carefully planted with trees laid off in groups, giving 
the scene such an air of taste and finish, as renders it 
worthy of being crowned by the charmingly majestic 
Dublin and Wicklow mountains which rise immediately 
at its back, and terminate the visible horizon to the 
south, for the whole extent within view. 
Besides the residence of the Lord Lieutenant, in this 
Park also are the private residences of the Secretary 
and Under-Secretary to the Government, and of other 
officials, which greatly tend to relieve the eye in look¬ 
ing over so extensive a domain, containing several 
thousand acres, reminding me involuntarily at the time, 
of one of our own great prairies in Illinois. It is well 
stocked with deer; here and there we passed several 
large herds of them bounding across our road, taking 
no more notice of us, or of the many other vehicles 
that passed, than so many cows would have done. The 
public have free access at all times to this Park, which 
is the most beautiful and most extensive that the inhab¬ 
itants of any city in any country have for their recrea¬ 
tion and amusement. It is the property of, and support¬ 
ed by the Government, and is kept in superb order. 
At the extreme west end we left this Park through 
similar gates, and descended Knockmaroon hill, to 
what is called the “lower road,” at the foot of which 
we suddenly came again on the Liffey, and continued 
along its banks four miles; here commences the far- 
famed Strawberry banks that supply Dublin with this 
delicious fruit. They extend rather more than two 
miles in length, rising from the road, steeply yet mode¬ 
rately sloping, some 600 or 800 feet to the level above. 
Along its basis are thatched cottages of the neatest kind 
and order, with bowers in front of each, where the 
citizens come of summer evenings, with their families, 
to eat fresh strawberries and cream, and to throw out 
their flies into the Liffey for either a trout or a salmon, 
with both of which fish it abounds, of the finest quality 
and largest size. 
AN IRISH FARM-YARD AND ITS APPURTENANCES. 
Anxious to see some of what was to be seen in th« 
farm-yard, I was out in the morning by 7 o'clock, but 
Mr. Rorke and his sons were there before me, and had 
finished their rounds by daylight. To describe his 
farm-yard is a task I undertake with pleasure, although 
I feel incompetent to do any thing like justice to it. It 
