Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


At some remote period things must have been new, but bating Casson's Hotel, at Letterfrack, there is nothing in good order between Mr. Mitchell-Henry's well-managed estate at Kylemore and Galway. At Clifden and all through the surrounding country things appear to be decaying or decayed.

Henry, who was an eminent surgeon before he became a great landowner, has gone about the work of reclamation with scientific knowledge as well as vigorous will, and now has a great area in the various stages of conversion from bog into productive land. Now the Kylemore improvements are the wonder of Connemara.

Dark-ribbed fields of similar size show where the potatoes have been dug, and men are dotted here and there busily engaged with work of various kinds. The green oases at the mouth of the magnificent pass of Kylemore are the work of Mr. Mitchell-Henry, M.P. for the county of Galway. When Mr.

The main difficulty is of course to get rid of the water, which keeps down the temperature of the land until it produces nothing but the humblest kind of vegetation. All the steps of the reclaiming process may be seen at Kylemore. The first thing to be done is to cut a big deep drain right through the bog to the gravel between it and the limestone.

This is thirteen shillings more than it is worth now, and would return interest for the necessary outlay at five per cent. per annum. It is well known that Mr. Mitchell Henry has pursued his work at Kylemore in the spirit of a pioneer, and that he looks to the employment of the poor Connemara folk on reclamations as the loophole of escape from their present miserable condition.

But hares and grouse, and even stray pheasants from Mr. Mitchell Henry's woods at Kylemore, will not convince the fragment of population around the great grazing farms that things are better now than of yore; and there is some reason for believing that disturbance is to be apprehended in this part of the country. The warning to Mr.

Henry first went salmon-fishing in the river Dowris, which flows from Kylemore Lake into the sea at Ballynakill Harbour, Kylemore was a mountain pass and nothing more.

Drinkwater has performed a similar operation upon county Clare Nothing in connection with the Kylemore and Fergus Reclamation works, which have brought to and distributed a large sum of money in their respective districts, is more remarkable than the apathy of the surrounding proprietors in one case and their hostility in the other. Mr.

Even the tenants themselves on the Kylemore Estate are beginning to wake up under the care of a resident landlord inclined to set them in the way of improving their condition. With the run of the mountain in addition to holdings varying from twelve to forty and fifty acres in extent, Mr.

There are to be seen some admirable specimens of skilful and liberal management, as well as instances of almost insane blundering on the part of both landlord and tenant. From Blarney to the Blaskets the distance is not that of a couple of counties, but the gap between Kylemore and Rinvyle between civilization and savagery.