As for the mud cabin, generally described as the Irish peasant’s only home, it is now a thing of the past. One would hardly, and after much research, find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at the end of Kerry or Mayo. True to say, when found, those specimens leave nothing to be desired for poverty and discomfort; no fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing but a roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls. The very pig that formerly shared its luxuries with the _genus homo_ and indicated a certain degree of relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has disappeared for ever. But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases. As a rule the mud cabin has been blotted out from the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened landlords systematically pursued its eradication; perhaps the peasants, tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated under other skies,—or more simply still, they took advantage of the last famine to die of hunger. Upon which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed to dilute the walls, render the mud house to the common reservoir, and wash out its very remembrance. The population of Ireland, it must be borne in mind, has been steadily decreasing for half a century. It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841; of 6,552,385 in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and 5,174,836 in 1881. By all appearances it must now have sunk under five millions. If this fish-eating race was not the most prolific under the sun it would have been blotted out long ago from the face of this planet. CHAPTER V. THE RACE. The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides the green colour and the absence of trees, the frequent ruins that meet the eyes everywhere—one cannot go two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles, abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings. There are quarters of large towns or boroughs, such as for instance the northern one in Galway, that might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows of houses, roofless and with gaping walls, for a street in Herculaneum or Pompeii. When the ancient stone walls are those of a church or chapel, they generally serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside; there occurred all the terrifying tales of former days, there took place all the local miracles, and there still is the favourite haunt of illustrious spirits, of fairies and _banshee_. Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come to group themselves at the foot of those ivy-clothed old walls, by an instinctive and touching effect of the Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his race; and those graves, generally covered with great slabs of stone, scattered among the tall grasses, wild and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of any sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the site.