Outside the wires were carried by posts in the ordinary way to the station at Valentia, whence they were conveyed to Killarney, and placed in communication with the general Telegraphic system over the world. The Telegraphic staff and operators were lodged in primitive apartments like the sections of a Crimean hut, and did not possess any large personal facility for enjoying social intercourse with the outer world, although so much intelligence passed through their fingers. But Foilhummerum may in time become a place with something more real than a future. If vessels from the westward do not like to make their number outside, there is nothing to prevent their running into Valentia for the purpose, at all events. On the plateau between the station and the cliff, day after day hundreds of the country people assembled, and remained watching with exemplary patience for the Big Ship. They came from the mainland across Port Magee, or flocked in all kinds of boats from points along the coast, dressed in their best, and inclined to make the most of their holiday, and a few yachts came round from Cork and Bantry with less rustic visitors. Tents were soon improvised by the aid of sails, some cloths of canvas, and oars and boathooks, inside which bucolic refreshment could be obtained. Mighty pots of potatoes seethed over peat fires outside, and the reek from within came forth strongly suggestive of whisky and bacon. Flags fluttered--the Irish green, with harp, crown surmounted; Fitzgerald, green with its blazon of knight on horse rampant, and motto of “Malahar aboo”--faint suspicion of Stars and Stripes and Union Jack, and one temperance banner, audaciously mendacious, as it flaunted over John Barleycorn. Nor was music wanting. The fiddler and the piper had found out the island and the festive spot, and seated on a bank, played planxty and jig to a couple or two in the very limited circle formed in the soft earth by plastic feet or ponderous shoemasonry, around which, sitting and standing, was a dense crowd of spell-bound, delighted spectators. In the bay below danced the light canvas-covered canoe or coracle in which the native fishermen will face the mountain billows of the Atlantic when no other boat will venture forth; and large yawls filled with country people passed to and fro, and the bright groupings of colour formed on the cliffs and on the waters by the red, scarlet, and green shawls of the women and girls, lighted up the scene wonderfully. [Illustration: T. Picken, lith from a drawing by R. Dudley London, Day & Sons, Limited, Lith. FOILHUMMERUM BAY, VALENCIA, LOOKING SEAWARDS FROM THE POINT AT WHICH THE CABLE REACHES THE SHORE.] [Illustration: T. Picken, lith from a drawing by R. Dudley London, Day & Sons, Limited, Lith. THE CLIFFS FOILHUMMERUM BAY, POINT OF THE LANDING OF THE SHORE END OF CABLE JULY 22ND.]