I stayed a fortnight there once, with an Englishman who had never seen Ireland before; and everything happened to us that happens in Lever's novels and that we all declare happens no longer. Our own water was poached to extinction; but we made friends with the most skilful angler I have seen (Dan Keary is his name, at your service), who escorted us to fish on a little stream high in the mountain, where in a raging flood we caught more big sea trout than either of us would have cared to carry and came home triumphant--to be confronted a couple of days later with the indignant owner of that water who wanted to know what we had been doing there. The upshot was that we had had the best day's fishing of many years, and made close alliance with the gentleman whose preserves we had innocently invaded. And I have no doubt that Dan spoke the exact truth when he said that he had been fishing that water all his life as often as the fancy took him. Nowadays much of the land (if it can be called land) about these parts has been bought by the tenants, who lease out the shooting and fishing and pay their instalments of purchase with the proceeds--an admirable condition under which both shooting and fishing are likely to improve. But except for fishing and shooting I cannot recommend anyone to go to Bangor Erris, which is the most desolate spot that I have ever trodden. Distant views of Achill's high peaks made the one element of beauty in that depressing landscape--where, nevertheless, I would gladly go back, to try my luck once again on that wildly rushing stream that comes down, a torrent from Corrsliabh. III Sligo town in itself is well worth a pilgrimage, if only because, unlike other towns in western Ireland, it is making modest advances towards prosperity: and for the lover of beauty it makes the centre of a district rich in scenery, rich in historic associations, and in monuments of a time far before written history. [Illustration: LOUGH GILL] The town lies at the outfall of a short broad river which flows from Lough Gill, and the row up to that lake with Hazelwood demesne on your left, rich in varied wooding, may honestly challenge a comparison with whatever is finest at Killarney. The lake itself is girded about with mountains, not perhaps so picturesque as Carrantuohil and Mangerton, yet far more known in story. On the west is Knocknarea, crowned with the huge cairn of stones which is named after Maeve, the fierce Queen of Connaught, wife of Ailill, lover of Fergus MacRoy, she who headed the great hosting into Ulster for the Brown Bull of Cooley. Yet earlier by far than this deposit of legend must be placed the great stone remains at Carrowmore three miles out of the town and in Hazelwood demesne. At Carrowmore are stone circles, cromlechs, and subterranean chambers of stone--all far prehistoric: in Hazelwood are what can be seen nowhere else in these islands but at Stonehenge--huge trilithons, part in the ritual of some Druidic cult.