Londonderry - Irish Pictures (1888)

From Irish Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil(1888) by Richard Lovett

Chapter IX: Belfast, Armagh, and Londonderry … continued

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Londonderry

Londonderry

Derry is more closely associated with England than many other Irish towns. The Irish Society of London owns a large part of the town and neighbourhood, and has considerable influence over its affairs. The famous siege is one of the few Irish events with which every schoolboy is acquainted. The large ocean steamers of the Allan and Anchor lines call at Moville, the port of Derry. The city is also the centre of a busy industrial life. Powerful religious forces act and react upon its 30,000 inhabitants.

Derry's chief historical associations bring together a very remote and a comparatively recent past. The city is indissolubly linked to the life of Columba; it did its part manfully in the seventeenth century struggle, and it exhibits to-day great activity, push and industry, strengthening rather than losing its grasp on the life of the age.

Lough Foyle is another arm of the Atlantic running inland parallel with Lough Swilly and Mulroy Bay. A few miles to the north of Londonderry it contracts into the River Foyle. A bend in the river forms upon the left bank a peninsula, and upon this hilly promontory, around which the Foyle sweeps in a fine curve, the old city was built. The hill rises to an elevation of 120 feet above the river, and makes a most picturesque site for the city. The Foyle is here a stream over 300 yards wide, and is crossed by a handsome bridge. The modern city has long since outgrown the ancient limits, has spread in all directions on the left bank, and has occupied advantageous sites on the steep slopes of the right bank of the Foyle. From the hill which rises high above the bridge, on the right bank of the Foyle, a capital bird's eye view of the city and its surroundings may be obtained. On this bank stands the terminus of the Coleraine and Belfast Railway. Both sides of the river are lined by quays, for the city possesses a large coasting and colonial shipping trade. The regular stopping of the Atlantic liners at Moville has made Derry an emigration centre, and on the quays, as at Cork, that sight can often be seen which is full of sinister omen for a thinly-populated country like Ireland; viz. groups of strong, young, able-bodied men and women, the real stamina of the nation, waiting to embark on the tender which will carry them off to the great steamer, never to return to the land of their birth.

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