two returned American girls got in, fine, stout-looking women, with distress in their expression, and we started again.  Dingle Bay could now be seen through narrow valleys on our left, and had extraordinary beauty in the evening light.  In the carriage next to ours a number of herds and jobbers were travelling, and for the last hour they kept up a furious altercation that seemed always on the verge of breaking out into a dangerous quarrel, but no blows were given.

At the end of the line an old blue side-car was waiting to take me to the village where I was going.  I was some time fastening on my goods, with the raggedy boy who was to drive me; and then we set off passing through the usual streets of a Kerry town, with public—­ houses at the corners, till we left the town by a narrow quay with a few sailing boats and a small steamer with coal.  Then we went over a bridge near a large water-mill, where a number of girls were standing about, with black shawls over their heads, and turned sharp to the right, against the face of the mountains.  At first we went up hill for several miles, and got on slowly, though the boy jumped down once or twice and gathered a handful of switches to beat the tall mare he was driving.  Just as the twilight was beginning to deepen we reached the top of the ridge and came out through a gap into sight of Smerwick Harbour, a wild bay with magnificent headlands beyond it, and a long stretch of the Atlantic.  We drove on towards the west, sometimes very quickly, where the slope was gradual, and then slowly again when the road seemed to fall away under us, like the wall of a house.  As the night fell the sea became like a piece of white silver on our right; and the mountains got black on our left, and heavy night smells began to come up out of the bogs.  Once or twice I noticed a blue cloud over the edge of the road, and then I saw that we were nearly against the gables of a little village, where the houses were so closely packed together there was no light from any of them.  It was now quite dark, and the boy got cautious in his driving, pulling the car almost into the ditch once or twice to avoid an enormous cavity where the middle of the road had settled down into the bogs.  At last we came to another river and a public-house, and went up a hill, from which we could see the outline of a chapel; then the boy turned to me:  ’Is it ten o’clock yet?’ he said; ‘for we’re mostly now in the village.’

This morning, a Sunday, rain was threatening; but I went out west after my breakfast under Croagh Martin, in the direction of the Atlantic.  At one of the first villages I came to I had a long talk with a man who was sitting on the ditch waiting till it was time for Mass.  Before long we began talking about the Irish language.