name. This town, as also Lurgan on Lough Neagh, makes damask and fine linen. This lake and the River Bann allow vessels to sail fifty-five miles into the heart of Eastern Ulster.

11. The Sperrin Mountains, on the borders of Derry and Tyrone, form a connecting link between the dreary sameness of the table-land of Antrim and the more rugged heights of Donegal, whose steep cliffs frown down upon the Atlantic from the northwest corner of Ireland.

12. The hills of this county, like the Snowdon, Berwyn, and Plynlimmon ranges in Wales, and most of the Scotch Highland ranges, trend from north-east to south-west. The highest summit, Errigal, is only 2466 feet.

14. In the south of Donegal the River Erne, issuing from the bog-land of Cavan through the two lakes of the same name, which fill a trench in the midst of the county of Fermanagh, flows into the deep gash of Donegal Bay.

14. The Erne, like the Bann, the Foyle, and many other rivers in Ireland, is noted for its salmon-fishery. The county-town of Enniskillen, standing on the water flowing from the upper to the lower lake, gives its name to a famous regiment of dragoons.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SHANNON.

1. In the hilly, north-west corner of Cavan, the southernmost county of Ulster, rises the Shannon, the longest river* in the British Isles, draining an area equal to two-thirds of the 6946 square miles drained by the Thames, and, like the Thames, navigable for a distance of 160 miles from its mouth.

2. Flowing southward through Lough Allen, the Shannon cuts in two the county of Leitrim, and 254 miles.

thenceforth, like the Thames, forms a boundary between counties.

3. On its right or west bank are Roscommon, Galway, and Clare; on its left or east are Longford, Westmeath, King's County, Tipperary, Limerick, and Kerry. The Shannon broadens during its course into two large lakes, Lough Rea and Lough Derg.

4. On quitting the latter, the river bends westward past the city of Limerick, and forms an estuary sixty miles long, with an opening between Loop and Kerry Heads eleven miles in width.

5. The Shannon, being navigable for steamships throughout so great a part of its long course, is the main artery of the island. It has only one feeder of any size, the Suck on its right bank, which parts Roscommon from Galway.

6. The Upper Valley of the Shannon consists mainly of bog-land, and is nowhere sharply defined by ranges of hills; but further south, near Lough Derg, its basin is straitened and bounded, on the east by the Slieve Bloom Mountains between King's and Queen's Counties (so called in honour of Queen Mary, and her husband, Philip of Spain), and on the west by the Slieve Boughta Mountains, which part Galway from Clare.

CONNAUGHT.

7. Having been thus tempted out of our course to follow the Shannon southwards from Ulster to Munster, we must now retrace our steps to the province of Connaught, which we left on the west entirely unnoticed.

8. This province, inhabited almost entirely by descendants of the old Keltic Irish, consists of a rocky peninsula jutting out boldly in the Atlantic, between Donegal and Galway Bays. The whole of this rugged coast is flanked by a fringe of not less rugged islands, of which the largest is called Achill. They are tenanted by a few wretched cotters and fishermen,

living on the scantiest fare and in the utmost squalor. Sligo, at the head of its well-sheltered bay, is the chief town in the north of Connaught.

9. In the north-western corner of Mayo, the Nephin Beg Mountains arrest the clouds which the west winds waft across the Atlantic towards Belfast. The long Lough Conn, with other smaller lakes between Killala and Clew Bays, make this part of Mayo almost an island.

10. Similarly, the still larger Loughs, Corrib and Mask, almost linking Clew Bay to Galway Bay, sever the south-west of Mayo and the west of Galway from the central plain of Ireland. Along the northern shores of Galway Bay the wild highlands of Connemára form a screen rising to 2680 feet.

11. The town of Galway, like Belfast and Cork, has a college connected with the Queen's University. We quit here the wildest, the most thinly peopled, the poorest and smallest of the four provinces, and pass to rugged Clare, the northernmost county of Munster. This province embraces the whole of the south-west corner of Ireland.

CHAPTER XVII.

MUNSTER.

1. The highlands of Clare form the northern watershed of the estuary of the Shannon, whose entrance they guard by tapering down to the cliffs of Loop Head.

2. Confronting this headland at the southern entrance of the estuary rises Kerry Head, the northernmost and smallest of a row of parallel rocky promontories thrust into the Atlantic by the mountains of Kerry.

3. If the spacious openings of Tralee, Dingle, Kenmare, and Bantry Bays, thus sheltered by the Kerry

highlands, were placed near a populous country, they would be of the utmost value to traders. As it is, they are visited only for their wild coast scenery by tourists, who flock to see the beauties of the lovely lakes of Killarney.

4. Off the tongue of land thrust out between Dingle and Kenmare Bays, lies the island of

For

Valentia, an important station for recording signs of weather, and helping to issue warnings to our seaports of storms approaching from the west. from Valentia starts the cable which lies along the bed of the Atlantic as far as the nearest point of Newfoundland. Dunmore Head and Valentia are the most westerly points of Ireland, projecting as