From the point of the Mullet to Erris Head, and across Broadhaven to Benwee Head and Portacloy, runs the wildest country and the most inaccessible in these islands. I have reached it only from the sea, and never anywhere in Ireland have I seen people so far removed from civilization as rowed out in their curraghs to meet us. Yet--so odd a place is Ireland--it is ten chances to one but in the loneliest of these creeks and mountains you would find folk who knew the great cities of America, and who if they landed in Boston or New York would find friends and kindred in plenty to greet them and help them to a living. Life is not so difficult here as it was formerly: for nowadays the trade in lobster fishing becomes very profitable on this unexploited coast, with its profusion of kelp-covered rocks and islands, and they have learnt in late years to take their toll of the salmon droves that pass this headland, making for Galway or the Shannon. What they have to sell, what they win at risk of life in the tremendous sea that runs among their rocks, they can sell now at a fair price. There is talk, too, of carrying a railway along the Mullet, in the hope of making Blacksod a haven for transatlantic commerce, and when that happens, the country will be gradually changed, as I have seen in my lifetime similar regions changed in Donegal; but till that day, whoever wants to see Ireland as Ireland has been any time for three or thirteen centuries (altered only by the introduction of three things, tea, paraffin oil, and American flour) can see it only in the northern parts of the Barony of Erris. It is no place to go for comfort; but "for to admire and for to see" it is well worth while. [Illustration: NEPHIN, FROM LOUGH CONN]