A lonely region too:
during my rambles I met not a single stranger like myself, and few
enough natives. It seems incredible that so beautiful a country should
be so deserted. After walking a dozen Irish miles you come across a
group of two or three one-roomed cottages, and, like as not, one or
more of those will have the roof off and the walls in ruins. The few
peasants whom one sees, however, are affable and hospitable, especially
when they hear you are from that terrestrial heaven whither most of
their friends and relatives have gone before them. They seem simple and
primitive enough at first sight, and yet they are as strange and
incomprehensible a race as any in the world. They are as superstitious,
as credulous of marvels, fairies, magicians, and omens, as the men whom
St. Patrick preached to, and at the same time they are shrewd,
skeptical, sensible, and bottomless liars. Upon the whole, I met with
no nation on my travels whose company I enjoyed so much, or who
inspired me with so much kindliness, curiosity, and repugnance.
"At length I got to a place on the sea-coast, which I will not further
specify than to say that it is not many miles from Ballymacheen, on the
south shore.
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