Where is Bessbrook? The answer is, you pass it as you travel by rail from Belfast to Dublin, a little more than fifty miles from the latter, a little more than thirty from the former place—close to the Newry station on the main line. By day and night it is visible, and testifies afar-off the industry of which it is the source and centre. About half a mile to your right you can just discern its lofty chimneys and gigantic works. By night the place looks like a palace of glass, as the cheerful light, eloquent of labour and capital and intelligence, shines out of its thousand windows. We get out of the train, and ascend the road on our right. If it be daytime we shall have a pleasant walk. Behind us is Newry, or rather the valley in which it is seated, where its merchants and tradesmen sell and buy and get gain; and the river with its ships, which trade to Liverpool and all parts of our English coast. On our left and right are mountains and hills, well planted with white cottages and farmers’ houses, which look smilingly at us in the morning sun. The interiors, we admit, may be capable of improvement. Many of them are of the rudest kind, with the bare earth for the floor, with stone walls, whose sides internally are black with the smoke of the peat fire, which is painfully manifested to the unaccustomed and curious stranger who inquires within. The inhabitants are all small farmers. They grow flax and potatoes, keep a cow or a goat, and poultry and pigs, the sale of which is their living. As for themselves, they never touch such delicacies, and live chiefly on potatoes and Indian meal. They are very dirty. Muck of all kinds surrounds their dwellings, and yet they seem to thrive, and the shoeless, unwashed, ragged boys and girls you meet up there, have faces and figures you often seek in vain amongst more civilised people and in more comfortable homes. They have a hard time of it. In their dreary cabins wretchedness seems to reign supreme. At the outside, a couple of rooms comprise the whole extent of the building devoted to the human biped, and he is but little better lodged than his cow or pig—that is all. Nevertheless, you can’t get the tenant to abandon his holding, for which he pays to take possession a great deal more than you would think it really worth, the rent of which is often high, and is generally scraped together with much difficulty and after considerable delay. To be behindhand with the rent is no uncommon thing in these parts, and a stranger up yon hills is viewed with considerable suspicion. It can be no good that takes him up there—such is the firm belief of the natives. No power on earth is able to get them to give up their mountain freedom and frugal fare for better living elsewhere. Here, at least, the Irishman is too contented.