Notes and Sport of a Dry -Fly Purist. 205- 



consenting to extortion. It was the ruling nuisance 

 everywhere ; everybody was keen after money, and 

 even the beggar who blessed you in his opening 

 appeal consigned you to Hades in his last speech if 

 you did not cross his hand with a coin. I can think 

 of nothing more likely than this to keep visitors 

 away from Ireland it is annoying and humiliating. 

 Killarney town itself is two miles from the nearest 

 shore of the lakes, and altogether disillusionising as 

 to the association of ideas connected with the name 

 of Killarney. But no word painting can overpraise 

 nor anything but personal observation realise and 

 do justice to the beauty and grandeur of the lake 

 scenery and its environment of solemn and majestic 

 mountains, on whose summits the clouds often rest. 

 On Wednesday, the 3rd, I appointed a fisherman 

 to meet me in his boat at Eoss Island at noon, 

 provided with all his own appliances for fishing the 

 lake according to his usual methods. I put a box of 

 quill-bodied flies and casts in my pocket and left my 

 inn at nine o'clock to walk two and a half miles 

 through Lord Kenmare's Home Park. The 

 entrance gates are near the Catholic Cathedral, 

 built fifty years ago by Pugin. Within the park 

 gates a clear, broad, circular space, completely 

 canopied by tall, over- shadowing trees, looks like 

 another, but leafy cathedral. At the lodge cottage 

 tickets, sixpence each, are issued to view the Home 



