If you want to fall head over ears in love with Ireland at the very
first sight of her charms, take, as we did, the steamer from
Cappoquin to Youghal, and float down the vale of the Blackwater-

'Swift Awniduff, which of the Englishman
Is cal' de Blackwater.'

The shores of this Irish Rhine are so lovely that the sail on a
sunny day is one of unequalled charm. Behind us the mountains
ranged themselves in a mysterious melancholy background; ahead the
river wended its way southward in and out, in and out, through rocky
cliffs and well-wooded shores.

The first tributary stream that we met was the little Finisk, on the
higher banks of which is Affane House. The lands of Affane are said
to have been given by one of the FitzGeralds to Sir Walter Raleigh
for a breakfast, a very high price to pay for bacon and eggs, and it
was here that he planted the first cherry-tree in Ireland, bringing
it from the Canary Islands to the Isle of Weeping.

Looking back just below here, we saw the tower and cloisters of
Mount Melleray, the Trappist monastery. Very beautiful and very
lonely looked 'the little town of God,' in the shadows of the gloomy
hills. We wished we had known the day before how near we were to
it, for we could have claimed a night's lodging at the ladies'
guest-house, where all creeds, classes, and nationalities are
received with a cead-mile-failte,* and where any offering for food
or shelter is given only at the visitors pleasure. The Celtic
proverb, 'Melodious is the closed mouth,' might be written over the
cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the monks who