to his honour; he advances his tenants money for all the lime they choose, and takes payment in eight years with rent.

Upon inquiring concerning the emigrations, I found that in 1772 and 1773 they were at the height; that some went from this neighbourhood with property, but not many.  They were in general poor and unemployed.  They find here that when provisions are very cheap, the poor spend much of their time in whisky-houses.  All the drapers wish that oatmeal was never under one penny a pound.  Though farms are exceedingly divided, yet few of the people raise oatmeal enough to feed themselves; all go to market for some.  The weavers earn by coarse linens one shilling a day, by fine one shilling and fourpence, and it is the same with the spinners—the finer the yarn, the more they

earn; but in common a woman earns about threepence.  For coarse linens they do not reckon the flax hurt by standing for seed.  Their own flax is much better than the imported.

This country is in general beautiful, but particularly so about the straits that lead into Strangford Loch.  From Mr. Savage’s door the view has great variety.  To the left are tracts of hilly grounds, between which the sea appears, and the vast chain of mountains in the Isle of Man distinctly seen.  In front the hills rise in a beautiful outline, and a round hill projects like a promontory into the strait, and under it the town amidst groups of trees; the scene is cheerful of itself, but rendered doubly so by the ships and herring-boats sailing in and out.  To the right the view is crowned by the mountains of Mourne, which, wherever seen, are of a character peculiarly bold, and even terrific.  The shores of the loch behind Mr. Savage’s are bold ground, abounding with numerous pleasing landscapes; the opposite coast, consisting of the woods and improvements of Castle Ward, is a fine scenery.

Called at Lord Bangor’s, at Castle Ward, to deliver a letter of recommendations but unfortunately he was on a sailing party to England; walked through the woods, etc.  The house was built by the present lord.  It is a very handsome edifice, with two principal fronts, but not of the same architecture, for the one is Gothic and the other Grecian.  From the temple is a fine

wooded scene: you look down on a glen of wood, with a winding hill quite covered with it, and which breaks the view of a large bay.  Over it appears the peninsula of Strangford, which consists of enclosures and wood.  To the right the bay is bounded by a fine grove, which projects into it.  A ship at anchor added much.  The house well situated above several rising woods; the whole scene a fine one.  I remarked in Lord Bangor’s domains a fine field of turnips, but unhoed.  There were some cabbages also.

Belfast is a very well built town of brick, they having no stone quarry in the neighbourhood.  The streets are broad and straight, and the inhabitants, amounting to about fifteen thousand, make it appear lively and busy.  The public buildings are not numerous nor very striking, but over the exchange Lord Donegal is building an assembly room, sixty feet long by thirty broad, and twenty-four high; a very elegant room.  A card-room adjoining, thirty by twenty-two, and twenty-two high; a tea-room of the same size.  His lordship is also building a new church, which is one of the lightest and most pleasing I have anywhere seen: it is seventy-four by fifty-four, and thirty high to the cornice, the aisles separated by a double row of columns; nothing can be lighter or more pleasing.  The town belongs entirely to his lordship.  Rent of it £2,000 a year.  His estate extends from Drumbridge, near Lisburn, to Larne, twenty miles in a right line,

and is ten broad.  His royalties are great, containing the whole of Loch Neagh, which is, I suppose, the greatest of any subject in Europe.  His eel fishery at Tome, and Port New, on the river Ban, lets for £500 a year; and all the fisheries are his to the leap at Coleraine.  The estate is supposed to be £31,000 a year, the greatest at present in Ireland.  Inishowen, in Donegal, is his, and is £11,000 of it.  In Antrim, Lord Antrim’s is the most extensive property, being four baronies, and one hundred and seventy-three thousand acres.  The rent £8,000 a year, but re-let for £64,000 a year, by tenants that have perpetuities, perhaps the cruellest instance in the world of carelessness for the interests of posterity.  The present lord’s father granted those leases.

I was informed that Mr. Isaac, near Belfast, had four acres, Irish measure, of strong clay land not broken up for many years, which being amply manured with lime rubbish and sea shells, and fallowed, was sown with wheat, and yielded £87 9s. at 9s. to 12s. per cwt.  Also that Mr. Whitley, of Ballinderry, near Lisburn, a tenant of Lord Hertford’s, has rarely any wheat that does not yield him £18 an acre.  The tillage of the neighbourhood for ten miles round is doubled in a few years.  Shall export one thousand tons of corn this year from Belfast, most of it to the West Indies, particularly oats.

August 1.  To Arthur Buntin’s, Esq., near Belfast;

the soil a stiff clay; lets at old rents 10s., new one 18s., the town parks of that place 30s. to 70s., ten miles round it 10s. to 20s., average 13s.  A great deal of flax sown, every countryman having a little, always on potato land, and one ploughing: they usually sow each family a bushel of seed.  Those who have no land pay the farmers 20s. rent for the land a bushel of seed sows, and always on potato land.  They plant many more potatoes than they eat, to supply the market at Belfast; manure for them with all their dung, and some of them mix dung, earth, and lime, and this is found to do better.  There is much alabaster near the town, which is used for stucco plaster; sells from £1 1s. to 25s. a ton.

On my way to Antrim, viewed the bleach green of Mr. Thomas Sinclair; it is the completest I have seen here.  I understood that the bleaching season lasted nine months, and that watering on the grass was quite left off.  Mr. Sinclair himself was not at home, or I should probably have gained some intelligence that might have been useful.

Crossed the mountains by the new road to Antrim, and found them to the summits to consist of exceeding good loam, and such as would improve into good meadow.  It is all thrown to the little adjoining farms, with very little or any rent paid for it.  They make no other use of it than turning their cows on.  Pity they do not improve; a work more profitable

than any they could undertake.  All the way to Antrim lands let, at an average, at 8s.  The linen manufacture spreads over the whole country, consequently the farms are very small, being nothing but patches for the convenience of weavers.

From Antrim to Shanes Castle the road runs at the end of Loch Neagh, commanding a noble view of it; of such an extent that the eye can see no land over it.  It appears like a perfect sea, and the shore is broken sand-banks, which look so much like it, that one can hardly believe the water to be fresh.  Upon my arrival at the castle, I was most agreeably saluted with four men hoeing a field of turnips round it, as a preparation for grass.  These were the first turnip-hoers I have seen in Ireland, and I was more pleased than if I had seen four emperors.

The castle is beautifully situated on the lake, the windows commanding a very noble view of it; and this has the finer effect, as the woods are considerable, and form a fine accompaniment to this noble inland sea.

Rode