parts of this county, is equal to that at Antrim and Carrickfergus. To procure a sufficient quantity of milk for making a cheese (25 or 30 pounds weight) at once, a number of people join; all the milk of one day is taken to the house fixed upon, and the cheese is made nearly in the same manner as the best English. This mode is called neighbouring, and goes regularly round the club or set: by many people these cheeses are thought to be nearly equal to the Cheshire. At Dunluce, Mrs. Moore keeps a regular dairy for cheese, one of which is made every day during the season, except Sunday. She uses whole curd, pressed till it is dry; salts, rubs, and turns frequently; makes one hundred and a half weight per cow, besides rearing every calf. Something is likewise made by churning the whey. This cheese being kept until it is at a proper age, is much esteemed, and consequently much sought after; it was sold at £3. 10s. per cwt. many years since. A considerable quantity of skimmed milk cheese is exposed for sale in Belfast and other markets; the price of this, some years since, was from 3 d. to 4 d. per lb. New milk cheeses are also made by many farmers, and sold from 6d. to 8d. per lb.; and, where the number of cows is sufficient to allow of one cheese being made at three milkings, they are often good. The great deficiency in our cheese-making, seems to arise from the too long time that is allowed to elapse before the whey is got completely off; for whenever it settles on the hardened curd, mouldiness is the consequence,

In Cheshire the cheese is finished, as to pressing, in twenty-four hours. Whilst this operation is going on, the makers are all the time employed in running sharp sticks through the holes of the vat to the centre of the cheese, which gives a free passage to the moisture, and renders longer pressing unnecessary; which, when continued beyond a certain time, brings off the rich parts of the curd along with the whey.

CHAPTER X.

Trade of this county, commencing with a history of the staple manufacture of the province.—Introduction and progress of the cotton trade.-The woollen, paper, and other inferior branches of manufacture.-View of the population of Antrim.—Island of Raghery.

Linen manufacture.

THE importance of this manufacture to the commercial interests of Ireland, is such, that no work professing to give a view of the existing history of that country, and more particularly of the Ulster district, through which we are now passing, would have any claim to public attention, if some sketch of the origin and progress of this trade did not form a prominent feature in the artist's portrait.

As an instrument of civilisation, liberality, and plenty, to a most respectable proportion of the population of Ireland, the linen trade stands in the first rank of public benefits; nor is there, perhaps, in the living history of this country, a single fact that casts broader light upon the immense advantage which our present political system (and we say this without intending any compliment to existing abuses) has over that of past ages,

than the astonishing progress which this trade. has made in Ulster since the revolution.

Next to the importance of this trade, as an instrument of wealth, civilisation, and refinement, the antiquity of its character casts a shade of. splendour over it, that lifts it above all competition.

It is generally allowed, that the manufacture of linen originated in the east, as well as most other arts and sciences; that the Phoenicians, who carried it on at an early period, (and who might have learned it in their trading intercourse with India) first planted colonies at Carthage and in Spain; and, as it is asserted by Irish historians, passing from thence into Ireland, they brought with them the knowledge of this art, and with it those useful inventions, the spindle and the loom. As a farther presumption of this eastern origin, the word Indic, which (according to Cormac's glossary) signifies linen, in the Irish language, is adduced to shew (from its similarity to the appellation India) that part of the world from which it was derived; and, among the forward to support the eastern descent, the possessed of the cultivation of flax and the making of linen, are, by the advocates of that descent, thought not to be the least strong. But, not to intrude farther upon so difficult a subject, it is most evident, from the very first English writers upon Ireland, that linen, made in this country, formed an essential part of the dress of the ancient Irish, at the time of their writing; and

many arguments brought claims of the Irish to an early knowledge they

consequently must at that time have been a general manufacture, which could only be effected by a long lapse of time.

In all authentic descriptions of the ancient Irish dress, mention is made of the long cota, universally worn by them; this was a kind of shirt dyed yellow, open before, and falling below the waist, so as to admit of being occasionally folded about the body, and made fast by a girdle round the middle; of some the sleeves were short, of others long, descending to the wrist; and the custom of dying yellow, Spencer thinks, was of eastern origin. Lord Bacon will have it that saffron was the ingredient used for this purpose; but the late Countess of Moira thought that the Irish rather dyed their linen with a species of moss (lichen) than with saffron, which indeed is very probable, as they would have found a difficulty in obtaining this latter plant in the early ages, while navigation was in its infancy; and it does not appear that the saffron plant grew here. The saffron coloured linen, in which Camden mentions that O'Neil and his followers were clad when they visited queen Elizabeth, was dyed with that kind of lichen that grew upon rocks; it is prepared by the Irish in archil, and it resembles, in the mass, that shade of yellow which borders on brown.

To these authorities, which are cited to prove a very ancient establishment of a linen fabric in Ireland, we shall add others even of greater weight: for, in an act of Henry VIII. to prevent forestalling, linen and yarn are particularly