A Tour in Ireland. 1776-1779

Section I.--Soil, Face of the Country, and Climate.

To judge of Ireland by the conversation one sometimes hears in England, it would be supposed that one-half of it was covered with bogs, and the other with mountains filled with Irish ready to fly at the sight of a civilised being. There are people who will smile when they hear that, in proportion to the size of the two countries, Ireland is more cultivated than England, having much less waste land of all sorts. Of uncultivated mountains there are no such tracts as are found in our four northern counties, and the North Riding of Yorkshire, with the eastern line of Lancaster, nearly down to the Peak of Derby, which form an extent of above a hundred miles of waste. The most considerable of this sort in Ireland are in Kerry, Galway, and Mayo, and some in Sligo and Donegal. But all these together will not make the quantity we have in the four northern counties; the valleys in the Irish mountains are also more inhabited, I think, than those of England, except where there are mines, and consequently some sort of cultivation creeping up the sides. Natural fertility, acre for acre over the two kingdoms, is certainly in favour of Ireland; of this I believe there can scarcely be a doubt entertained, when it is considered that some of the more beautiful, and even best cultivated counties in England, owe almost everything to the capital, art, and industry of the inhabitants.

The circumstance which strikes me as the greatest singularity of Ireland is the rockiness of the soil, which should seem at first sight against that degree of fertility; but the contrary is the fact. Stone is so general, that I have great reason to believe the whole island is one vast rock of different strata and kinds rising out of the sea. I have rarely heard of any great depths being sunk without meeting with it. In general it appears on the surface in every part of the kingdom; the flattest and most fertile parts, as Limerick, Tipperary, and Meath, have it at no great depth, almost as much as the more barren ones. May we not recognise in this the hand of bounteous Providence, which has given perhaps the most stony soil in Europe to the moistest climate in it? If as much rain fell upon the clays of England (a soil very rarely met with in Ireland, and never without much stone) as falls upon the rocks of her sister island, those lands could not be cultivated. But the rocks are here clothed with verdure; those of limestone, with only a thin covering of mould, have the softest and most beautiful turf imaginable.

Of the great advantages resulting from the general plenty of limestone and limestone gravel, and the nature of the bogs, I shall have occasion to speak more particularly hereafter.

The rockiness of the soil in Ireland is so universal that it predominates in every sort. One cannot use with propriety the terms clay, loam, sand, etc.; it must be a stony clay, a stony loam, a gravelly sand. Clay, especially the yellow, is much talked of in Ireland, but it is for want of proper discrimination. I have once or twice seen almost a pure clay upon the surface, but it is extremely rare. The true yellow clay is usually found in a thin stratum under the surface mould, and over a rock; harsh, tenacious, stony, strong loams, difficult to work, are not uncommon: but they are quite different from English clays.

Friable, sandy loams, dry but fertile, are very common, and they form the best soils in the kingdom for tillage and sheep. Tipperary and Roscommon abound particularly in them. The most fertile of all are the bullock pastures of Limerick, and the banks of the Shannon in Clare, called the Corcasses. These are a mellow, putrid, friable loam.

Sand which is so common in England, and yet more common through Spain, France, Germany, and Poland, quite from Gibraltar to Petersburg, is nowhere met with in Ireland, except for narrow slips of hillocks, upon the sea coast. Nor did I ever meet with or hear of a chalky soil.

The bogs, of which foreigners have heard so much, are very extensive in Ireland; that of Allen extends eighty miles, and is computed to contain three hundred thousand acres. There are others also, very extensive, and smaller ones scattered over the whole kingdom; but these are not in general more than are wanted for fuel. When I come to speak of the improvement of waste lands, I shall describe them particularly.

Besides the great fertility of the soil, there are other circumstances which come within my sphere to mention. Few countries can be better watered by large and beautiful rivers; and it is remarkable that by much the finest parts of the kingdom are on the banks of these rivers. Witness the Suir, Blackwater, the Liffey, the Boyne, the Nore, the Barrow, and part of the Shannon, they wash a scenery that can hardly be exceeded. From the rockiness of the country, however, there are few of them that have not obstructions, which are great impediments to inland navigation.

The mountains of Ireland give to travelling that interesting variety which a flat country can never abound with. And, at the same time, they are not in such number as to confer the usual character of poverty which attends them. I was either upon or very near the most considerable in the kingdom. Mangerton, and the Reeks, in Kerry; the Galties in Cork; those of Mourne in Down; Crow Patrick, and Nephin in Mayo, these are the principal in Ireland, and they are of a character, in height and sublimity, which should render them the objects of every traveller's attention.

Relative to the climate of Ireland, a short residence cannot enable a man to speak much from his own experience; the observations I have made myself confirm the idea of its being vastly wetter than England; from the 20th of June to the 20th of October I kept a register, and there were, in one hundred and twenty-two days, seventy-five of rain, and very many of them incessant and heavy. I have examined similar registers I kept in England, and can find no year that even approaches to such a moisture as this. But there is a register of an accurate diary published which compares London and Cork. The result is, that the quantity at the latter place was double to that at London. See Smith's "History of Cork."

From the information I received, I have reason to believe that the rainy season sets in usually about the first of July and continues very wet till September or October, when there is usually a dry fine season of a month or six weeks. I resided in the county of Cork, etc., from October till March, and found the winter much more soft and mild than ever I experienced one in England. I was also a whole summer there (1778), and it is fair to mention that it was as fine a one as ever I knew in England, though by no means so hot. I think hardly so wet as very many I have known in England. The tops of the Galty mountains exhibited the only snow we saw; and as to frosts, they were so slight and rare that I believe myrtles, and yet tenderer plants, would have survived without any covering. But when I say that the winter was not remarkable for being wet, I do not mean that we had a dry atmosphere. The inches of rain which fell in the winter I speak of would not mark the moisture of the climate. As many inches will fall in a single tropical shower as in a whole year in England. See Mitchel's "Present State of Great Britain and North America." But if the clouds presently disperse, and a bright sun shines, the air may soon be dry. The worst circumstance of the climate of Ireland is the constant moisture without rain. Wet a piece of leather, and lay it in a room where there is neither sun nor fire, and it will not in summer even be dry in a month. I have known gentlemen in Ireland deny their climate being moister than England, but if they have eyes let them open them, and see the verdure that clothes their rocks, and compare it with ours in England--where rocky soils are of a russet brown however sweet the food for sheep. Does not their island lie more exposed to the great Atlantic; and does not the west wind blow three-fourths of a year? If there was another island yet more westward, would not the climate of Ireland be improved? Such persons speak equally against fact, reason, and philosophy. That the moisture of a climate does not depend on the quantity of rain that falls, but on the powers of aerial evaporation, Dr. Dobson has clearly proved. "Phil. Trans." vol. lxvii., part i., p. 244.

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