Ulster
Tim natural gateway into Ulster is through Belfast, and the visitor who approaches this city for the first time on an early summer morning, either by steamer or by train, will have to confess that seldom has a centre of industry been set in more beautiful surroundings—hills, waters, woods ; and even within the busiest and meanest quarters of the city itself a window of heaven opens at times between the factory chimneys to show a glimpse of Ben Madigan, better known as The Cave Hill, that boasts a profile in which Young Ulster used to find the very counterfeit of the great Napoleon's. This charm of wild scenery encroaching upon the demesne - of counting-house and engine-room is a symbol of what the stranger may expect to meet all over the North of Ireland ; the country seems to have kept its youth better than in the industrial districts of England.
Hiving used Belfast as a gateway, the visitor may now set forth to discover the proVince. If he is a sportsman, he will pick his proper season and visit the Bann, the Erne, or many another river or lake famous for its fishing ; the begs and moorland and hills provide their fur.4 and feathered creatures ; Belfast Lough is a nursery of bold and skilful seamen,hoth professional and amateur, and for the yachtsman who does not shrink from a bad bar and an entrance with one of the worst tidal currents in Europe, Strangford Lough with its three hundred and sixty-five islands provides a delightful cruising ground for craft of all kinds • Buncrium on Lough Swilly, Bundoran and Portrush overlooking the Atlantic, and Newcastle below Slieve Donard will be known by name to golfers who have never even set foot in Ireland ; and in hotel or clubhouse the tourist will quickly learn that the Ulsterman is never seen at his best till welcoming a stranger 4: from over the water."
Do not linger in the larger towns, though each has its panache, from marble-built Armagh to the " Maiden City " on the Foyle, but set out to see something of the country in either car or char-h-barie. The average Ulsterman would be the last to claim this as a land of romance, yet if you are lucky enough to have as cicerone some disciple of that most *arm-hearted of antiquarians, the late Francis Joseph Biggar, there is hardly a hamlet or hill but will yield up its story ; Cromlechs and dolmens innumerable surge out of the heather as milestones of the immemorial past ; that rough slab of stone marks the grave of Saint Patrick • that Norman keep has sheltered John Lackland and Edward Bruce ; that little island of the lake wherein you are fishing was where Jeremy Taylor wrote Holy Living; there stand the walls of /Deny still defended by cannon presented by the great London
city companies; town, so beautifully situated on a lake, is etter known in many a world-famous battle by the name of its children, the Inniskiffings ' • at those crags towering above the Antrim coast a Spanish galleon of the routed Armada discharged her cannon in one last magnificent gesture of defiance before crashing to destruction on the rocks below.
• No ; the land does not- lack romance.
• Then to those who are content with Nature's ancient harmonies no pleasanter lot can be offered than that they should go driving, not too swiftly, down the Gap of Barnesmore, past that shield of silver, Lough Esk, towards Donegal and the Atlantic ; or along the southern shores of Lough Erne, with its reeds and islands and woods ; or by the pine-sentinelled expanse of an Ulster bog at sunset when every little pool has borrowed flames and amber from the sky ; or down from the moorlands above Ballyeastle towards a sea thatis patchwork of blues and greens, ermined with breakers • or find themselves in tine ofthose countless other places of enciantment, memories of which set the Ulster exile to " thinking long," which is our northern Doric for home-sickness.
Go where he may in Ulster the traveller will find little of the peaceful, hypnotizing beauty that lurks about every English lane - rather a grandeur that compels a thrill of fear as well as aclmiration—the beauty of a valkyrie that begets sternness of soul in her chosen mate, courage and endurance in her children.
These indeed are the most conspicuous qualities of the people. A strangely mixed race • for with the original Celtic strain have been amalgamated Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon adventurers, Scots Covenanters and freebooters, Ironsides and Huguenots ; hence a race that knows how to speak its mind, and never hesitates to do so, using as few words as possible—as when The O'Neill wrote to The O'Donnell, " Pay me my tribute, or . . . . " and had as reply, " I owe you no tribute, and if I did . . . . "—a trait, perhaps, that does not make for popularity.
The Irish- poet's description of Switzerland might as well have been applied to Ulster : " Men and steel." Not entirely in the sense of Goldsmith's gloss, " the soldier and his sword " ; for though the Ulsterman can handle the tools of war at a pinch, he is seen at his best when the iron he controls is employed in the arts of peace, the ploughshare, the ship- wright's hammer, or the more complicated robots of modern machinery. He has made famous glass for which he had to import some of his raw materials from Spain ; he has spun cotton, and continued the unequal struggle against Lanca- shire till the American Civil War ; he has built up the linen industry in a climate naturally unsuited for the preparation of the finer kinds of flax ; he has launched colossal steel ships from a land that possesses neither coal nor iron ; he has made barren hills arable, and wrested pastures from the waves ' • his whole history is that of a struggle with the forces of Nature.
What wonder if he has had little time to think of romance ? Yet at this present crisis in his story, when, so far as one can foresee, economic forces will soon demand yet another change of tools, make him lay aside those he has used with such ripe mastery to grasp others as yet untried, romance is surely waiting for him round the next corner that leads into the future. Whatever the tools may be that come into those strong, capable hands, they are certain to be well and truly. Used ; and the observant stranger having felt the shadow of gaming changes cannot but leave the shores of Ulster with a Ifindly thought for the people as well as for the country.
Jonx Hitaort LEPPEE.
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