People have gone to the Highlands and to Switzerland, and perhaps seen many places not much more grand and picturesque than the district where Con Mc Nale had made a patch of the desert to smile. A long range of blue mountains rising irregularly above each other, looked down on an extensive plain, that lay along the shore of a mighty lake, to the banks of which thick plantations crowded so near that the old Irish called the water _Lough-glas_, which signifies waters of green. The districts where a short but thick and sweet herbage sprung up among the rocks, were certainly put to the use of feeding cattle, and it was while employed there as a herd-boy, that Con Mc Nale determined to become a farmer. His mind was made up. His earnings were hardly enough to keep life in him, and if he had tried to save the price of a spade out of them to begin business with, the chances are that he would have died prematurely for want of food. But that didn’t matter much; he was determined to be a farmer. This determination was then as likely of fulfilment as that of Oliver Cromwell to become Protector of the Realm, while tending the vats at Huntingdon; or that of Aladdin to become a prince, when he was a ragged boy in the streets of Bagdad. To show, however, what perseverance will do, when I made acquaintance with Mr. Con Mc Nale he had actually got possession of a spade, and was making good use of it in a ditch—his own ditch, on his own land. As he went on, now digging, now resting on the handle, he told me all about his gradual promotion from a herd-boy to a country jontleman.