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6 LEINSTER
a selection must be made and indicated at once. First,
then, the county of Dublin itself, infringing a little on
Kildare. Secondly, the Wicklow Mountains and their
glens. Thirdly, that rich valley of the Boyne, which
was the heart of the ancient kingdom of Meath. But,
before details are dealt with, some general idea of the
topography must be given.
Suppose you are on deck when the mail boat from
Holyhead has been two hours out, or a little more (I
write here for strangers), you will see Dublin Bay open
before you. To your right, making the northernmost
horn of the curve, is the rocky, almost mountainous,
peninsula of Howth, and ten miles north of it you
see its shape repeated in the Island of Lambay.
Except for that, to the north and to the west,
coast and land are all one wide level, far as your
eye can reach—unless by some chance the air be so
rarefied that you discern, fifty miles northward, the
purple range of Carlingford Hills (still in Leinster),
and beyond them, delicate and aerial blue, the long
profile of the Mourne Mountains, where Ulster begins.
But to the south of the city (where it lies in the
bight of the bay, spilling itself northward along the
shore to Clontarf of famous memory, and southward
to Kingstown and beyond) mountains rise, a dense
huddle of rounded, shouldering heights, stretching away
far as you can see. Near Dublin they almost touch the