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The light of other days.
'Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me.' Thomas Moore.
If you want to fall head over ears in love with Ireland at the very first sight of her charms, take, as we did, the steamer from Cappoquin to Youghal, and float down the vale of the Blackwater-- 'Swift Awniduff, which of the Englishman Is cal' de Blackwater.' The shores of this Irish Rhine are so lovely that the sail on a sunny day is one of unequalled charm.

Behind us the mountains ranged themselves in a mysterious melancholy background; ahead the river wended its way southward in and out, in and out, through rocky cliffs and well-wooded shores.
The first tributary stream that we met was the little Finisk, on the higher banks of which is Affane House.

The lands of Affane are said to have been given by one of the FitzGeralds to Sir Walter Raleigh for a breakfast, a very high price to pay for bacon and eggs, and it was here that he planted the first cherry-tree in Ireland, bringing it from the Canary Islands to the Isle of Weeping.
Looking back just below here, we saw the tower and cloisters of Mount Melleray, the Trappist monastery.

Very beautiful and very lonely looked 'the little town of God,' in the shadows of the gloomy hills.