Should it ever be my happy lot to revisit the city and haven of Cork, I shall most certainly decline to land at Queenstown. The gentleman who took a Census of the smells at Cologne, and said,
“At Colne, a town of monks and bones, And pavements, fanged with murderous stones, And rags and jags, and hideous wenches, I counted four-and-seventy stenches, All well-defined and separate stinks!”
might, perhaps, be interested in this locality, and would find an ample field for his nasal arithmetic. The heat was intense, the tide low; and, though I have no doubt that, further from the sea, the place is sweet and healthy enough, I never remember to have inhaled so offensive an atmosphere as that which prevailed, upon St. Bartholomew's Day, in the year 1858, and in the front street of the Queenstown. As an Irishman, Chief Baron Woulfe, once wrote of Paris, “the air is so loaded with stenches of every kind, as to be quite irrespirable;” and turning to my friend, I said, “O Francis, it is written, in this 'Handbook to the Harbour and City of Cora,' that 'Queenstown is celebrated, and justly so, for the equality, mildness, and salubrity of its temperature,' and that 'many medical men prefer it to the climate of _Madeira_;' but take thy kerchief from thy nose brief while, and answer me, my Francis, terse and true, doth not this statement seem to thee, in boyhood's phrase, 'a Corker!'”
He replied, that “as the stinks were not quite sufficiently defined to sketch, he should hire a boat and bathe;” and, having purchased a couple of oyster-cloths, the nearest approximation he could find to towels, so indeed he did, leaving me (incapable of natation), to contemplate the Garrison, an extensive pile with a very military and practical look, Spike Island, once the residence of Mr. Mitchell, and now occupied by some 2000 malefactors of less illustrious name, and Rocky and _Hawlbowline_ Islands, which are used as ammunition stores.
The heat and the incense (how I envied the white gulls, flying lazily over the waters, and ever and anon dipping, as one thought, to cool themselves!) were so oppressive and irritating, that when a small boy, buying apples, would keep dropping them on the ground, in a vain attempt to thrust more into his pocket than the cavity could possibly accommodate, I almost thirsted for his blood, and like the stern old Governor in _Don Juan_, I could have seen him