This road is one of the boundaries about the region of the Twelve Pins, through which wild sanctuary no made track for wheels has been driven. You have the Pins (or "Bens" rather) on the south as you go from Leenane to Maam; on the west as you go from Maam to Maam Cross; on the north from Maam Cross to Recess, and on the east as you take the beautiful road from Recess by Lough Inagh, and so through the defile at Kylemore, where the great house stands with long terrace facing on to the exquisite lower lake, approached by a roadway along which are mile-long hedges of crimson fuchsia. Kylemore means the Big Wood, and the name is natural enough, for here only in Connemara is there any considerable growth of trees; the country is too bare and wild for them. At Carna, on the shore of Galway Bay, can be seen the lamentable remains of an experimental plantation, replaced now by a new and much more successful planting of the New Zealand flax, which with its yucca-like fronds grows very freely on the west, and gives some hope of a new industry. But beyond Maam, on the shores of Corrib, is wooding and to spare; none denser, more undisturbed. About Cong are the famous woodcock covers where Lord Ardilaun's guests have killed five hundred birds in a day. Almost every island on the lake (and there is said to be an island for every day in the year) is set thick with leafage, and there are those who claim that Corrib where it broadens out between Cong and Oughterard is a rival to Killarney. I do not seek to decide such a contention; but the place is far richer in antiquarian interest than Killarney, and infinitely less tourist-ridden. [Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S HOME UNDER DIAMOND MOUNTAIN, BALLYNAKILL BAY]