- end_line
- 4878
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4800
- text
- CHAPTER XXVII.
HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
The Highlander was not a grayhound, not a very fast sailer; and so, the
passage, which some of the packet ships make in fifteen or sixteen
days, employed us about thirty.
At last, one morning I came on deck, and they told me that Ireland was
in sight.
Ireland in sight! A foreign country actually visible! I peered hard,
but could see nothing but a bluish, cloud-like spot to the northeast.
Was that Ireland? Why, there was nothing remarkable about that; nothing
startling. If _that’s_ the way a foreign country looks, I might as well
have staid at home.
Now what, exactly, I had fancied the shore would look like, I can not
say; but I had a vague idea that it would be something strange and
wonderful. However, there it was; and as the light increased and the
ship sailed nearer and nearer, the land began to magnify, and I gazed
at it with increasing interest.
Ireland! I thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before
Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I
thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O’Connell; I thought of my
uncle’s ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of
the gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and
I thought I should very much like to leave the ship and visit Dublin
and the Giant’s Causeway.
Presently a fishing-boat drew near, and I rushed to get a view of it;
but it was a very ordinary looking boat, bobbing up and down, as any
other boat would have done; yet, when I considered that the solitary
man in it was actually a born native of the land in sight; that in all
probability he had never been in America, and knew nothing about my
friends at home, I began to think that he looked somewhat strange.
He was a very fluent fellow, and as soon as we were within hailing
distance, cried out—“Ah, my fine sailors, from Ameriky, ain’t ye, my
beautiful sailors?” And concluded by calling upon us to stop and heave
a rope. Thinking he might have something important to communicate, the
mate accordingly backed the main yard, and a rope being thrown, the
stranger kept hauling in upon it, and coiling it down, crying, “pay
out! pay out, my honeys; ah! but you’re noble fellows!” Till at last
the mate asked him why he did not come alongside, adding, “Haven’t you
enough rope yet?”
“Sure and I have,” replied the fisherman, “and it’s time for Pat to cut
and run!” and so saying, his knife severed the rope, and with a
Kilkenny grin, he sprang to his tiller, put his little craft before the
wind, and bowled away from us, with some fifteen fathoms of our
tow-line.
“And may the Old Boy hurry after you, and hang you in your stolen hemp,
you Irish blackguard!” cried the mate, shaking his fist at the receding
boat, after recovering from his first fit of amazement.
Here, then, was a beautiful introduction to the eastern hemisphere;
fairly robbed before striking soundings. This trick upon experienced
travelers certainly beat all I had ever heard about the wooden nutmegs
and bass-wood pumpkin seeds of Connecticut. And I thought if there were
any more Hibernians like our friend Pat, the Yankee peddlers might as
well give it up.
The next land we saw was Wales. It was high noon, and a long line of
purple mountains lay like banks of clouds against the east.
Could this be really Wales?—Wales?—and I thought of the Prince of
Wales.
And did a real queen with a diadem reign over that very land I was
looking at, with the identical eyes in my own head?—And then I thought
of a grandfather of mine, who had fought against the ancestor of this
queen at Bunker’s Hill.
But, after all, the general effect of these mountains was mortifyingly
like the general effect of the Kaatskill Mountains on the Hudson River.
- title
- Chunk 1