Pictures at Dunkettle.

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A St. Michael, &c. the subject confused, by Michael Angelo. A St. Francis on wood, a large original of Guido. A St. Cecilia, original of Romanelli. An assumption of the Virgin, by L. Caracci. A quaker's meeting, of above fifty figures, by Egbert Hemskirk. A sea view and rock piece, by Vernet. A small flaggellation, by Sebastian del Piombo. A Madonna and Child, small, by Rubens. The crucifixion, many figures in miniature, excellent, though the master is unknown. An excellent copy of the famous Danae of Titian, at Monte Cavallo, near Naples, by Cioffi of Naples. Another of the Venus of Titian, at the Tribuna in Florence. Another of Venus blinding Cupid, by Titian, at the Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Another of great merit of the Madonna Della Sedia of Raphael, at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, by Stirn, a German, lately at Rome. Another of an holy family, from Raphael, of which there are said to be three originals, one at the king's palace in Naples, one in the palais royal in Paris, and the third in the collection of lord Exeter, lately purchased at Rome. A portrait of Sir Patrick Trent, by Sir P. Lely. An excellent portrait of a person unknown, by Dahl.

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September 17, to Castlemartyr, the seat of the earl of Shannon, one of the most distinguished improvers in Ireland; in whom I found the most earnest desire to give me every species of information, with a knowledge and ability which enabled him to do it most effectually. Passed through Middleton, a well built place, which belongs to the noble lord to whom it gives title. Castlemartyr is an old house, but much added to by the present earl; he has built, besides other rooms, a dining one thirty-two feet long by twenty-two broad, and a drawing one, the best rooms I have seen in Ireland, a double cube of twenty-five feet, being fifty long, twenty-five broad, and twenty-five high. The grounds about the house are very well laid out; much wood well grown, considerable lawns, a river made to wind through them in a beautiful manner, an old castle so perfectly covered with ivy as to be a picturesque object. A winding walk leads for a considerable distance along the banks of this river, and presents several pleasing landscapes.

From Rostellan to Lota, the seat of Frederick Rogers, esq. I had before seen it in the highest perfection from the water going from Dunkettle to Cove, and from the grounds of Dunkettle. Mrs. Rogers was so obliging as to shew me the back grounds, which are admirably wooded, and of a fine varied surface.

Got to Corke in the evening, and waited on the dean, who received me with the most flattering attention. Corke is one of the most populous places I have ever been in; it was market-day, and I could scarce drive through the streets, they were so amazingly thronged: on the other days the number is very great. I should suppose it must resemble a Dutch town, for there are many canals in the streets, with quays before the houses. The best built part is Morrison's Island, which promises well; the old part of the town is very close and dirty. As to its commerce, the following particulars I owe to Robert Gordon, esq. the surveyor general :

Average of nineteen Years' Export, ending March 24, 1773.

Hides, at 11. each
Bay and woollen yarn

VOL. IV.

£64,000 294,000

Small exports, Gottenburgh herrings, horns, hoofs, &c. feather-beds,

palliasses, feathers, &c.

35,000

£1,100,190

Average prices of the nineteen years on the custom books. All exports on those books are rated at the value of the reign of Charles II; but the imports have always 10 per cent on the sworn price added to them. Seventy to eighty sail of ships belong to Corke. Average of ships that entered that port in those nineteen years, eight hundred and seventy-two per annum. The number of people at Corke mustered by the clergy by hearth-money, and by the number of houses, payments to minister, average of the three, sixty-seven thousand souls, if taken before the first of September, after that twenty thousand increased. There are seven hundred coopers in the town. Barrels all of oak or beech, all from America: the latter for herrings, now from Gottenburgh and Norway. The excise of Corke now no more than in Charles the Second's reign. Ridiculous!

Cork old duties, in 1751, produced
Now the same

:

£62,000 140,000

Bullocks, 16,000 head, 32,000 barrels; 41,000 hogs; 20,000 barrels. Butter, 22,000 firkins of half a hundred weight each, both increase this year, the whole

being

240,000 firkins of butter,
120,000 barrels beef.

Export of woollen yarn from Corke, 300,0001. a year in the Irish market. No wool smuggled, or at least very little. The wool comes to Corke, &c. and is delivered out to combers, who make it into balls. These balls are bought up by the French agents at a vast price, and exported; but even this does not amount to 40,0001. a year.

Prices.

Beef, 21s. per cwt. never so high by 2s. 6d.; Pork 30s. never higher than 18s. 6d. owing to the army demand. Slaughter dung, 8d. for a horse load. Country labourer, 6d. about town 10d. Milk, seven pints a penny. Coals, 3s. 8d. to 5s. a barrel, six of which make a ton. Eggs, four a penny.

Corke labourers: Cellar ones, twenty thousand; have 1s. 1d. a day, and as much bread, beef, and beer as they can eat and drink, and seven pounds of offals a week for their families. Rent for their house, 40s. Mason and carpenters' labourers 10d. a day. Sailors now 31. a month and provisions: before the American war 28s. Porters and coal-heavers paid by the great. State of the poor people in general incomparably better off than they were twenty years ago. There are imported eighteen thousand barrels annually of Scotch herrings, at 18s. a barrel. The salt for the beef trade comes from Lisbon, St. Ube's, &c. The salt for the fish trade from Rochelle: for butter English and Irish.

Particulars of the woollen fabrics of the county of Cork received from a manufacturer. The woollen trade, serges and camblets, ratteens, frizes, druggets, and narrow cloths, the last they make to 10s. and 12s. a yard; if they might export to 8s. they are very clear that they could get a great trade for the woollen manufactures of Corke; the wool comes from Galway and Roscommon, combed here by combers, who earn 8s. to 10s. a week, into balls of twenty-four ounces, which is spun into worsteds of twelve skeins to the ball, and exported to Yarmouth for Norwich; the export price, 30l. a pack, to 331. never before so high; average of them 26l. to 301. Some they work up at home into serges, stuffs, and camblets; the serges at 12d. a yard, thirty-four inches wide; the stuffs sixteen inches, at 18d. the camblets at 91⁄2d. to 13d. the spinners at 9d. a ball, one in a week; or a ball and half 12d. a week, and attend the family besides; this is done most in Waterford and Kerry, particularly near Killarney; the weavers earn 1s. a day on an average. Full three-fourths of the wool is exported in yarn, and only one-fourth worth worked up. Half the wool of Ireland is combed in the county of

Corke.

A very great manufacture of ratteens at Carric-on-sure, the bay worsted is for serges, shalloons, &c. Woollen yarn for coarse cloths, which latter have been lost for some years, owing to the high price of wool. The bay export has declined since 1770, which declension is owing to the high price of wool.

No wool smuggled, not even from Kerry, not a sloop's cargo in twenty years, the price too high; the declension has been considerable. For every eighty-six packs that are exported, a licence from the lord lieutenant, for which 201. is paid.

From the act of the last sessions of Great Britain for exporting woollen goods for the troops in the pay of Ireland, Mr. Abraham Lane, of Corke, established a new manufacture of army clothing for that purpose, which is the first at Corke, and pays 401. a week in labour only. Upon the whole there has been no increase of woollen manufacture within twenty years. Is clearly of opinion that many fabrics might be worked up here much cheaper than in France, of cloths that the French have beat the English out of; these are, particularly, broad-cloths of one yard and half-yard wide, from 3s. to 6s. 6d. a yard for the Levant trade. Frizes which are now supplied from Carcassone in Languedoc. Frizes, of twenty-four to twenty-seven inches, at 10d. to 13d. a yard. Flannels, twenty-seven to thirty-six, from 7d. to 14d. Serges of twenty-seven to thirty-six inches, at 7d. to 12d. a yard; these would work up the coarse wool. At Ballynasloe fair, in July, 200,0001. a year bought in wool. There is a manufactory of knit-stocking by the common women about Cork, for eight or ten miles around; the yarn from 12d. to 18d. a pair, and the worsted, from 16d. to 20d. and earn from 12d. to 18d. a week. Besides their own consumption, great quantities are sent to the north of Ireland.

All the weavers in the country are confined to towns, have no land, but small gardens. Bandle or narrow linen, for home consumption, is made in the western part of the county. Generally speaking, the circumstances of all the manufacturing poor are better than they were twenty years ago. The manufactures have not declined, though

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the exportation has, owing to the increased home consumptions. Bandon was once the seat of the stuff, camblet, and shag manufacture, but has in seven years declined above three-fourths. Have changed it for the manufacture of coarse green linens, for the London market, from 6d. to 9d. a yard, twenty-seven inches wide; but the number of manufacturers in general much lessened.

Rode to the mouth of Cork harbour; the grounds about it are all fine, bold, and varied, but so bare of trees, that there is not a single view but what pains one in the want of wood. Rents of the tract south of the river Caragoline, from 5s. to 30s. average, 10s. Not one man in five has a cow, but generally from one to four acres, upon which they have potatoes, and five or six sheep, which they milk, and spin their wool. Labour 5d. in winter, 6d. in summer; many of them for three months in the year live on potatoes and water, the rest of it they have a good deal of fish. But it is remarked, at Kinsale, that when sprats are most plentiful, diseases are most common. Rent for a mere cabin 10s. Much paring and burning; paring twenty-eight men a day, sow wheat on it and then potatoes; get great crops. The soil a sharp stony land; no lime-stone south of the above river. Manure for potatoes, with sea weed for 26s. which gives good crops, but lasts only one year. Sea sand much used, no shells in it. Farms rise to two or three hundred acres, but are hired in partnership.

Before I quit the environs of Cork, I must remark, that the country on the harbour, I think preferable, in many respects for a residence, to any thing I have seen in Ireland. First, it is the most southerly part of the kingdom. Second, there are very great beauties of prospect. Third, by much the most animated, busy scene of shipping in all Ireland, and consequently, fourth, a ready price for every product. Fifth, great plenty of excellent fish and wild fowl. Sixth, the neighbourhood of a great city for objects of convenience.

September 25. Took the road to Nedeen, through the wildest region of mountains that I remember to have seen; it is a dreary, but an interesting road. The various horrid, grotesque, and unusual forms in which the mountains rise, and the rocks bulge; the immense height of some distant heads, which rear above all the nearer scenes, the torrents roaring in the vales, and breaking down the mountain sides, with here and there a wretched cabin, and a spot of culture yielding surprise to find human beings the inhabitants of such a scene of wildness, altogether keep the traveller's mind in an agitation. and suspence. These rocks and mountains are many of them no otherwise improveable than by planting, for which, however, they are exceedingly well adapted.

Sir John Colthurst was so obliging as to send half a dozen labourers with me, to help my chaise up a mountain side, of which he gave a formidable account: in truth it deserved it. The road leads directly against a mountain ridge, and those who made it were so incredibly stupid, that they kept the straight line up the hill, instead of turning aside to the right, to wind around a projection of it. The path of the road is worn by torrents into a channel, which is blocked up in places by huge fragments, so that it would be a horrid road on a level; but on a hill so steep, that the best path would be difficult to ascend, it may be supposed terrible: the labourers, two passing strangers, and my servant, could with difficulty get the chaise up. It is much to be regretted that the direction of the road is not changed, as all the rest from Cork to Nedeen is good enough. For a few miles towards the latter place the country is flat on the river Kenmare, much of it good, and under grass or corn. Passed Mr. Orpine's at Ardtilly, and another of the same name

at Killowen.

Nedeen is a little town, very well situated, on the noble river Kenmare, where ships of one hundred and fifty tons may come up: there are but three or four good houses.