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'On Sir George Colthurst's Ballyvourney estate, twenty miles east of Killarney, under Mr. Hussey's auspices about £30,000 had been expended in draining, building, and roadmaking.
There was now a possibility of carrying corn to market if grown, or of bringing it into the parish; and Mr C built a mill for grinding it. He also built an inn, and induced a coach-proprietor to run his coach from Cork to Killarney through Ballyvourney, it being a better line in distance, level, picturesque, and beautiful far surpassing in every respect the old road by Millstreet.
Visitors to Ireland usually conclude their journey at Killarney; but if they would continue their route to Caragh Lake, Blackstone, Lady Headley's improvements, and go on through the Pass of Droum to Valentia and Cahersiveen, they would discover that Killarney is only the opening to a scene of grandeur and sublimity. Mr C found Ballyvourney in the inaccessible state I have described.
As good ploughmen and agriculturists in the various departments may now be had in Ballyvourney as in most places. All faction-fights are at an end; and although, little more than twenty years ago, these were the weekly Sabbath occupation, they are now like an item of an old almanac.
There was at that time no road into or out of Ballyvourney: it was in this respect like the Happy Valley. The passes are yet in existence, and are fearful to look at, where a gentleman from Kenmare, on his journeys to Cork, used to bring his chariot, accompanied by a number of footmen, and unharnessing the horses, let it down by ropes from the top of the precipice.
I had performed the same journey several years before; but I now travelled, after passing Macroom, by a road that had been made since my last visit, through Ballyvourney, a wild and mountainous district, formerly impassable.
Butler, of Waterville, a successful salmon fishery, great part of the produce whereof goes, at some little advance on sixpence per pound, to the agents of a London firm, who also get an enormous supply of mushrooms from county Kerry. There is a greatly-improved property in county Cork, lying west of Macroom and south of Mill Street. This is Ballyvourney, one of the estates of Sir George St.
In a very extensive culture of turnip and corn crops; in drainage on a large scale; in the building of capacious farm-offices; in planting the land not of an arable quality; and latterly, in the thinning of these plantations all under the direction of a Scotch steward almost unlimited employment was given; in addition to which, the establishment of a dispensary, the constant residence of a valuable clergyman, a station for police, and the intercourse carried on by the daily running of two public vehicles, have combined to render the inhabitants of Ballyvourney as industrious and civilised as those in any part of the British islands.
After the trial was over, a parish priest came to congratulate Morris, and said to him: 'My lord, you have laughed Fenianism out of Limerick. In 1850 I became agent to the Colthurst property, which consisted of most of the parish of Ballyvourney, one estate alone containing about twenty-three thousand acres. The rental was then over £4600.
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