66 Scenery and Antiqtnties of 



Lake, with the " Twelve Bens" (2,000 feet) in the background, 

 is unrivalled. The silvery lakes — Glendalough, Derryclare, 

 Inan — teem with salmon and trout, and offer inexhaustible 

 sport. The seacliffs and headlands of Clifden and Achill, 

 washed by the broad Atlantic, are grand and wild. Clew Bay, 

 comprising an area of 28 square miles, studded with over 100 

 islands, affords from Croagh Patrick (2,500 feet) one of the 

 rarest panoramic views in the world, not excepting the 

 Thousand Isles of the St. Laurence. Lough Corrib, 18 miles 

 long, is a small, fresh-water, inland sea. The venerable ruins 

 of Cong Abbey are not only beautiful, but traditional and 

 legendary. Loughs Conn and Cullin, the former eight miles 

 long, affords views that are the real of the extravagant scenic 

 artist's ideal — wild foreground, water -jutting headlands, backed 

 by numerous Unes of hills and high mountains. Lough Gill 

 and Hazlewood Demesne afford a change from the wild and 

 romantic to the wooded class of scenery, still, however, blended 

 in the background with desert-looking, serrated mountains. 

 To the scenic tourist, the health-seeker, the angler, the sports- 

 man, the botanist, the geologist, the archaeologist, the artist, 

 or the pedestrian, the attractions offered by the Western High- 

 lands are unrivalled, with the additionalcharmof being in parts 

 unexplored. Its streams and waters are as pure as its breezes 

 wafted in by the Atlantic. No barriers on its rivers stop the 

 fish from running up from the sea, nor does any product of 

 manufacture poison them. The coracle skims over its bays and 

 inlets, reaping the harvest of the deep. The western peasant 

 believes in home manufacture, as he and his family produce 

 almost all they require of food and clothing, and are technically 

 educated to an extent that the peasant of the North is not- 

 They spin, weave and dye the wool of their sheep, knit their 

 hosiery, make their shoes, coracles, and many other articles. 

 They are good builders of walls without mortar, and frequently 

 erect their own dwelling-houses. Nature provides for these 

 western districts many things that in our cities could not be 

 procured at any cost. Scientists state that ozone is produced 



