Autumnal Rovings. 195 



half a mile of the county town, you put up a covey of birds, 

 who will probably be less familiar with mankind in the 

 course of the autumn. An enthusiastic curate is being 

 rowed off in one of the boats as we near the beach of Lough 

 Neagh, making ready his spinning tackle. He might save 

 himself the trouble, for the main river and the other 

 streams that feed this vast sheet of fresh water have been 

 terribly swollen with the recent rains, and the reverend 

 angler must go far from shore before he will get a chance of 

 slaying either pike or trout. 



Let us, far wiser in our day and generation, make friends 

 with the fishermen who, in a picturesque group on the grass, 

 are engaged in the occupation which those other fishermen, 

 eighteen hundred years ago, by another inland lake, were 

 pursuing — mending their nets. This will be about the hour 

 when they should be looking after their lines and snares in 

 the Lough, and we must persuade them to bring their fishing 

 ground into our course for Shane's Castle. 



A lake resembles a jewel in this— it is all the better for a 

 good setting ; and the best settings for a sheet of water are 

 risings woods if it be small, and bold, receding hills if it be 

 of extraordinary dimensions. Nature has kindly recognized 

 this with most of the Scottish lakes, and who cannot remem- 

 ber the wonderful effect which the brawny brow of the 

 neighbouring Ben has upon the loch which is so happy 

 under its protecting shield ? Lough Neagh, on the contrary, 

 has every right to complain of its flat uninteresting shore ; 

 still it has some counterbalancing things to boast of. It 

 claims affinity to Antrim, Tyrone, Armagh, Londonderry, 

 and Down. It receives several streams, and jealously 

 absorbs them all, allowing but one outlet, the river Bann. 

 It is twenty miles long, and from one point of embarkation 

 a dozen miles broad, with a shore line of some eighty 



