right in under the steep side of a mountain almost precipitous, where the eagles built till a year or two back, and for three parts of its circumference ringed about like the crater of a volcano. It was a day of dry wind, northerly to north-easterly, and of hard lights: one lacked the magical enchantment of westerly air over the whole: yet for sheer grandeur I do not know that all my wanderings after fish in Ireland have ever taken me to so fine a scene. [Illustration: THE GAP OF DUNLOE, KILLARNEY] That little hotel, primitive in its equipment but most friendly, has its attractions to offer all the year round, for the salmon fishing begins in earnest in February, and through the winter months there is rough shooting (grouse, cock, and snipe), to be had over the great expanses of heather and those broad belts of native wooding which grow about the river in its lower course. From the hotel down to the lake your path lies between this scrub of oak and holly and birch and a water, swift yet deep, where pool succeeds pool, each divided from the next only by strong rapids. You have no monopoly there: the river is fished from both banks and can be covered right across, though it needs a good man to do it; but it is practically a free fishing and the best free river fishing that I know in Ireland--absolutely an ideal spot for the holiday-maker who does not insist on being near the sea. You can walk from it all the finest mountains in Kerry since it lies in the very centre: and away west of you is Glenbeigh, another valley where decent quarters can be had amid landscape of the same type. Of the same type--but I cannot believe that anywhere in Kerry or out of it you will match the journey which convoyed me from Glencar to my next stage at the Caragh Lake hotel. It was inland scenery no doubt, but the breath and the feeling of the sea is over all this neck of sea-washed Iveragh, and that river valley seemed no more than an avenue through the hills leading to the gateway of ocean. We walked along the river bank, often shoulder high in fern, often stopping to pull the blackberry clusters, and we studied the pools set in, here among trees, there with open sward on both sides and moor stretching away behind. Below the rapids we took boat, and for a mile or more rowed through level bogland, with groups of Scotch fir, purple stemmed in the afternoon light, rising from the river bank. Between their trunks, or in the open gaps, we could see the peaked mass of Carrantuohil, rising in the south-east, the light on its high ridges, but the valleys and chasms on its sides deep in shadow. As we neared the lake the flat land broadened, and from across it came the aromatic, pungent smell of bog myrtle, distinct as the scent from a beanfield, but strong and tonic as brine. Then for an hour and half we paddled down the lake between mountain and mountain, winding round promontory after promontory into sight of reach after reach of the lake.