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6o LEINSTER
cruelties. Historic records crowd so thick in it that
one has scarcely time to speak of beauty. And yet
from the ridge of the hill above Monasterboice is a
view which pleases me beyond almost anything I
know in Ireland. Midway on that northern plain one
has the Mourne Mountains beyond fertile levels to
the north, the Dublin Hills beyond fertile levels to
the south, and the blue sea close at hand abreast of
all. Still, you may match that elsewhere in Ireland;
you cannot match the river itself. From Navan a little
leisurely steamer will take you to Drogheda, dodging
from canal into river, from river back to canal, through
scenery as fertile and as cultivated as the banks of
the Thames, yet rendered far more beautiful by the
charm of the river itself—a typical salmon stream,
with its pools, its plunging flood, its long swirling
reaches. I have written of it elsewhere and may
perhaps be allowed to quote my own writing:
"... Above Navan the Boyne is sedgy and weed-choked; but
if you follow the towpath down from Navan, between canal and
river, you will find yourself heaping scorn on the Thames. Here
are wide spaces of smooth water, with steep wooded banks beyond
them—banks ambered, when I saw them last, with all the tones
of autumn. But (since Boyne is a famous salmon stream, and
way must be made for the running fish) here are no high lockgates
damming back the water in long sluggish fiats. Everywhere
the run is brisk, and constantly broken by low weirs,
under which long races swirl and bubble in a way to tantalize every
angler, and delight even those who do not know the true charm