While our guide was inquiring for Mr. Duggan, we made an inspection of the house, where a man, his wife and seven children lived. There was the one principal room in which we were standing, which was about ten by twelve feet, and eight feet high. There was no floor, except the original earth. There was only one opening for a window, and that had never known a pane of glass. In one end of the room there was a dingy, smoky fireplace, around which were huddled three or four children, scantily dressed in loose cotton slips that came to just below the knee. At the other end of the room a brood of chickens disported themselves in a pile of furze, while every few minutes a huge porker would push his nose in at the open door, only to be driven away by one of the children. [Illustration: A COUNTY CORK CABIN.] The family was very interesting. The mother was tall, well formed, and of an exceedingly pleasant appearance, while the children, shy at the sight of so many strangers, were sturdy, healthful and _clean_. They were bright and intelligent, and under any other circumstances and mode of life would grow up to be eminently representative citizens. On the return of Mr. Duggan from the fields, we went with him up the Galtee Mountains, he explaining on the way that he was very comfortably fixed compared with his neighbors. He said that his grandfather had taken the little holding he occupied, when it was full of stones and rocks, and was next to worthless. He paid a rent of three shillings an acre for it. During his lifetime the land was partially reclaimed, the rocks and boulders were taken out of a part of one field, and the rent was advanced to seven shillings. His father further improved it and raised some little crops, and the rent went up to twenty shillings. When the present tenant succeeded to it, it was in comparatively good shape, and with the improvements he had made, building the house, or rather hovel, the value of the land had increased enough in the mind of the landlord to justify him in placing the rent at two pounds. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A BETTER CLASS CABIN, COUNTY CORK.] [Sidenote: THE ALTERNATIVE.] That tract of land in America, if one were to go to the few districts where such abominably bad land can be found, would be thought extremely high if it were sold at a dollar, or four shillings an acre. "Well, how in the world can you raise enough on such a holding to pay such an exorbitant rent?" [Illustration: ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.] "I can't do it. I've tried my best, but it is absolutely impossible." "Suppose you don't pay the rent, then what?" "I'll be thrown out in the road, with my family and the little furniture we have gotten together." "In case you refuse to be thrown out of the house you have built, and off the land you and your fathers before you made from utterly worthless fields of rocks?" "Then those fellows would come down upon me."