Travelers experience delightful feelings as the old world is approached
for the first time. All that has been read or told, and half believed, is
now felt to be true, and you are delighted that you are so soon to see
for yourself the "Mother Islands," and Europe which have peopled the
western world with sons and daughters.
With the precision of the New York and Jersey City ferries the ocean
steamers enter the harbors of the old and new world. On the southwestern
coast of Ireland is Bantry Bay, memorable in history as having been twice
entered by the French navy for the purpose of invading Ireland. In sight
is Valentia, the British terminus of the first Atlantic cable to North
America, also the terminus of the cables laid in 1858, 1865, and 1866,
and of others since laid. The distance is 1635 miles from Valentia Bay
to St. John, Newfoundland.
From the deck of the steamer, Ireland seems old and worn. Her rocky capes
and mountainous headlands reach far into the ever encroaching Atlantic
like the bony fingers of a giant. Fastnet Rock lighthouse on the right,
telling the mariner of half-sunken rocks, and Cape Clear on the left,
soon drop behind.
Approaching Queenstown, the green forests and fields and little white
homes of fishermen and farmers are visible along the receding shore.
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