Finally as we entered the wide northern stretch--for our course was due north--all the shore was seen divided into demesnes, big and little, each with its own wooding. The hotel lies farthest of all towards the river's outflow in the north-west, and whoever chose that site deserves credit, for across the wide shining water rise the whole ring of mountains--Carrantuohil away to the south-east, and all the other heights that close in the valley behind Cloon Lake and Bealachbeama spreading fan-wise across the horizon as you look out from the pleasant terrace where palm and hydrangea grow. It is not so finished, not so exquisite, as Killarney; but I should rather choose it for a holiday. I sat on the terrace for an hour that Sunday and watched the sunlight fade off Carrantuohil: all was green and olive when we sat down, for it was a coldish evening and the air northerly; but cloud lay on the peaks, or rather caught the peaks intermittently as it drifted in wreaths across, so that at no time was the whole mountain visible. But gradually as the sun sank these wreaths became touched with a rosy glow, and below them what had been olive-green took on deep tints of coppery purple, rich and glowing, the purple gaining as the rose deepened on the cloud wreath; and higher and higher the shaft of light struck, reaching now only the very topmost pinnacles, till finally it faded out, and all lay before as in a sombre stillness waiting for the fall of night. Nothing that I carry away from Killarney haunts me with the same fullness of beauty, but perhaps only because Killarney is no one's discovery; it has no secret lover. You might as well seek to praise Sarah Bernhardt's genius or Tennyson's charm of style. Yet I suppose each one will discern for himself some passing perfection, some special facet of that loveliness--as I indeed remember the wonderful, shadowed, lucid green of water reflecting darkly the bank of tall reeds which grow westward of the landing stage to which we rowed in after fishing: and remember, too, the singular sight of a man's naked body, as he stood poised before plunging in to bathe, some hundred yards from us; for the low sun caught his figure, outlined against the long line of dark foliage behind him, and made it at once the glowing centre of a beautiful landscape. This was on the lower lake, largest by far of the three which form a crescent, compassing from south to north (as the water runs) the eastern flank of the Reeks.