Free TransAtlantic by Colum McCann Page A

healthy, green, robust. Near Greystones they stopped on a hill to watch the magnificent play of light on the last of Dublin Bay. There were rainbows in the distance, iridescent over the dulse-strewn strand.
    WEBB AND HE took turns sitting up on the boards, up front with Creely. The land was stunning. The hedges in bloom. The gallop of streams. When it rained they sat in the carriage, opposite each other, reading. Occasionally they leaned across to tap one another on the knee, read a passage aloud. Douglass was rereading the speeches of O’Connell. He was amazed by the agility of the mind. The nod towards the universal. He wondered if he would get another chance to meet the man, to spend proper time with him, to apprentice his own ideas with the Great Liberator.
    The carriage bounced along rutted roads. It was only slightly faster than a stagecoach or jaunting car. Douglass was surprised to learn that there were as yet no railroads south of Wicklow.
    The afternoons spread in a great rush of yellow across the hills. Shutters in the sky, opening and closing suddenly. A swinging brightness and then a darkness again. There was some raw innocence about the land.
    When he sat up front, on the boards, crowds came out of theirhouses just to look at him. They clapped his shoulder, shook his hand, blessed him with the sign of the cross. They tried to tell him stories of landlords, of absentees, of English atrocities, of loved ones far away, but Webb was impatient to get along, they had a schedule to keep, lectures to give.
    Small children ran after the carriage, often for a mile down the road, until they seemed to seep down, brittle, into the landscape.
    WICKLOW, ARKLOW, ENNISCORTHY: he charted the names in his diary. It struck him that there truly was a suggestion of hunger over the land. In the boardinghouses at night the owners apologized for the lack of potato.
    IN WEXFORD HE stood on the top stairway of the Assembly Hall. He was hidden from view, but he could see down the staircase to the next floor where a table was set up; his poster on the wall, rippling in a small breeze.
    It was the local gentry who came to see him. They were finely dressed, curious, patient. They sat quietly in their chairs, removed their scarves, and waited for him. His words stirred them—
Hear hear!
they shouted,
Bravo!
—and after his speech they made out promissory notes, said they would organize bazaars, fetes, cake sales, send the money across the Atlantic.
    But when Douglass stepped out into the street he felt a sharpness move along his skin. The streets were thronged with the poor Irish, the Catholics. An energy of doom to them. There was talk of Repeal Rooms, clandestine debates. Houses being burned. Whenever he moved amongst them he was disturbed and thrilled both. The papistswere given to laughter, revelry, high sadness, their own clichés. A street performer danced in the bell-tipped lappets of a clown’s outfit. Children went along the street hawking ballad sheets. Women sparked clay pipes. He wanted to stop in the streets and deliver an impromptu word, but his hosts moved him along. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he felt he was looking into a ditch that was only half-dug.
    He was driven down a long laneway of majestic oak trees towards a huge mansion. Candles in the windows. Servants in white gloves. He had begun to notice that he was surrounded mostly by English accents. Magistrates. Landlords. They were melodic and well informed, but when he asked of the hunger that he had seen in the streets they said there was always a hunger in Ireland. She was a country that liked to be hurt. The Irish heaped coals of fire upon their own heads. They were unable to extinguish the fire. They were dependent, as always, on others. They had no notions of self-reliance. They burned and then poured the empty buckets down upon themselves. It had always been so.
    The conversation swerved. They engaged him on matters of democracy, ownership, natural