“Yes, sir, Patsie Fitzgerald, and I’m proud of my name, my family, the Emerald Isle, and the fine steamer that’s taking us safely home, and may God bless all you fine people, and keep my wife and babies and my dear old mother!”

“Thank you!” said Alfonso, “here, Patsie, is a little money for the babies,” and the sailor tipped his hat and bowed his thanks.

The signal officer on Brea Head, Valentia Island, was soon exchanging signals with the “Majestic,” and five minutes later the sighting of the “Majestic” was cabled to the Lloyds of Liverpool and London and back to New York, via Valentia Bay, and it was known that evening in Harrisville that the Harris family were safely nearing Queenstown.

Travelers experience delightful feelings as the old world is approached for the first time.  All that has been read or told, and half believed, is now felt to be true, and you are delighted that you are so soon to see for yourself the “Mother Islands,” and Europe which have peopled the western world with sons and daughters.

With the precision of the New York and Jersey City ferries the ocean steamers enter the harbors of the old and new world.  On the southwestern coast of Ireland is Bantry Bay, memorable in history as having been twice entered by the French navy for the purpose of invading Ireland.  In sight is Valentia, the British terminus of the first Atlantic cable to North America, also the terminus of the cables laid in 1858, 1865, and 1866, and of others since laid.  The distance is 1635 miles from Valentia Bay to St. John, Newfoundland.

From the deck of the steamer, Ireland seems old and worn.  Her rocky capes and mountainous headlands reach far into the ever encroaching Atlantic like the bony fingers of a giant.  Fastnet Rock lighthouse on the right, telling the mariner of half-sunken rocks, and Cape Clear on the left, soon drop behind.

Approaching Queenstown, the green forests and fields and little white homes of fishermen and farmers are visible along the receding shore.  Roach’s Point, four miles from Queenstown is reached, where the mails are landed and received, if the weather is bad, but Captain Morgan decided to steam into Queenstown Harbor, one of the finest bays in the world, being a sheltered basin of ten square miles, and the entrance strongly fortified.  Within the harbor are several islands occupied by barracks, ordnance and convict depots, and powder magazines.  This deep and capacious harbor can float the navies of the world.  In beauty it compares favorably with the Bay of Naples.

Cove, or Queenstown, as Cove is called, since the visit of Queen Victoria in 1849, has a population of less than ten thousand.  It is situated on the terraced and sheltered south side of Great Island.  Here for his health came Rev. Charles Wolfe, author of “Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note.”

In the amphitheatre-shaped town on parallel streets rise tiers of white stone houses, relieved by spire and tower.  On neighboring highest hills are old castles, forts, and a tall white lighthouse.