The industrial resources of Ireland / By Robert Kane.

  • Kane, Robert, 1809-1890.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The industrial resources of Ireland / By Robert Kane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    369/492 (page 347)
    limits of the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, which had been a place of refuge for malefactors and desperadoes of all kinds, and had remained totally uncultivated, a set of roads were made under the direction of Mr. Griffith. As the roads advanced, cottages and farm houses sprang into existence along their sides; cultivation extended itself from their edges into the waste. The bad characters that had inhabited it dis- appeared, and a single policeman has marched a prisoner through the entire district, without any other than the most friendly greetings along his way. The whole organization of the locality has been changed, and at the same time with a pecuniary benefit to the public funds, which I shall hereafter notice. The effects of opening out with roads some very desolate parts of Clare, are thus described by a gentleman of intelli- gence and station, in a communication to the Board of Works, the accuracy of which the Commissioners guarantee. «Communications have been effected between large’ towns through mountain districts, whereby the distance will be in each case shortened, and in which districts, previous to the construction of these roads, no wheel carriages of any kind could be used. ‘‘The immediate effect has been to excite the minds of the people to the pursuits of honest industry; they can now bring lime into the mountains, and they can carry produce out of them. ‘‘Tllicit distillation has been checked, first by a market being opened for the sale of grain, and secondly, by the facili- ties afforded to the revenue officers in their search after pri- vate stills: the consequent benefit in a moral point of view is immense. ‘The soil of the mountain districts having been hitherto unworked, has been found, by burning and liming, to produce potatoes in such abundance, and of such excellent quality, that very large quantities have been taken from the neighbourhood of Lough Grana (the parts most known to the writer) to the county Limerick, the excellence of the roads making the trans- port easy; thus the deficiency of food in some parts of the