[p. 59] At about 7 o'clock next morning my companions left me on foot not being able to get any conveyance except that of a car for their baggage. The road they had to go is straight, dusty, enclosed only by stone walls without the least shade. After getting my breakfast I also left Killarney to seek my lodgings at Mucruss. There I lived like a hermit for three weeks, during which time I traversed a good deal of country in the immediate neighbourhood rapidly gaining health and strength. The weather which till this time had been almost always fine now changed for the worse and during the rest of my stay in Ireland I never experienced two fine days together and seldom even one day without rain.
[p. 78a] The antiquities of this district are not very numerous — Mucruss Abbey97 is a pleasing ruin with the characteristic features of the Irish abbey. The eagerness of the common people to have their friends buried within the consecrated walls occasionally produces unpleasant scenes in most of the Irish ruins and in none has this been more noticed than in that at Mucruss.
[p. 79a] Two copper mines have been worked at Killarney. They furnish a grey ore which is very rich in metal and a yellow pyrites which is also rich tho inferior to the former. Some cobalt has also been found. The mine at Ross is now worked; that at Mucruss has been abandoned in consequence of the water of the lake finding its way in & drowning some of the men. The ore is bedded in the limestone which dips gradually to the South & in both instances the mine follows the slope of the limestone under [p. 80a] the bed of the lake.
[p. 83] During my stay at Mucruss I only saw one funeral procession & this I was assured was a very moderate one as it was that of a protestant & the Catholics are more attentive to keep the old forms; yet it was numerously attended — the women chanting if the expression may be [Note, p. 177] applied to such a noise. After a child had exhausted itself in the first paroxisms of rage or grief it will frequently continue a sort of measured cry & if any person will conceive this multiplied by perhaps two or three hundred voices he will have no bad idea of an Irish howl. The coffin is not shut up in a hearse but laid on a
The women & children in the remoter parts of Ireland seem generally to be ignorant of English or at least to know it so imperfectly as to be unwilling to speak it. The men almost [p. 178] universally understood, but they speak it with hesitation as if it were a foreign tongue & with little of that peculiar accent which marks an Irishman in this country.