“Bog and rock?  Nakedness of the land?  What is needed here but prudence and skill, justice and law?  This soil, see, is fat enough, if men were here to till it.  These rocks—­who knows what minerals they may hold?  I hear of gold and jewels found already in divers parts; and Daniel, my brother Humphrey’s German assayer, assures me that these rocks are of the very same kind as those which yield the silver in Peru.  Tut, man! if her gracious majesty would but bestow on me some few square miles of this same wilderness, in seven years’ time I would make it blossom like the rose, by God’s good help.”

“Humph!  I should be more inclined to stay here, then.”

“So you shall, and be my agent, if you will, to get in my mine-rents and my corn-rents, and my fishery-rents, eh?  Could you keep accounts, old knight of the bear’s-paw?”

“Well enough for such short reckonings as yours would be, on the profit side at least.  No, no—­I’d sooner carry lime all my days from Cauldy to Bideford, than pass another twelve-month in the land of Ire, among the children of wrath.  There is a curse upon the face of the earth, I believe.”

“There is no curse upon it, save the old one of man’s sin—­’Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to thee.’  But if you root up the thorns and thistles, Amyas, I know no fiend who can prevent your growing wheat instead; and if you till the ground like a man, you plough and barrow away nature’s curse, and other fables of the schoolmen beside,” added he, in that daring fashion which afterwards obtained for him (and never did good Christian less deserve it) the imputation of atheism.

“It is sword and bullet, I think, that are needed here, before plough and harrow, to clear away some of the curse.  Until a few more of these Irish lords are gone where the Desmonds are, there is no peace for Ireland.”

“Humph! not so far wrong, I fear.  And yet—­Irish lords?  These very traitors are better English blood than we who hunt them down.  When Yeo here slew the Desmond the other day, he no more let out a drop of Irish blood, than if he had slain the lord deputy himself.”

“His blood be on his own head,” said Yeo, “He looked as wild a savage as the worst of them, more shame to him; and the ancient here had nigh cut off his arm before he told us who he was:  and then, your worship, having a price upon his head, and like to bleed to death too—­”

“Enough, enough, good fellow,” said Raleigh.  “Thou hast done what was given thee to do.  Strange, Amyas, is it not?  Noble Normans sunk into savages—­Hibernis ipsis hiberniores!  Is there some uncivilizing venom in the air?”

“Some venom, at least, which makes English men traitors.  But the Irish themselves are well enough, if their tyrants would let them be.  See now, what more faithful liegeman has her majesty than the Inchiquin, who, they say, is Prince of Themond, and should be king of all Ireland, if every man had his right?”