In Limerick itself King John's Castle with its great rounded towers frowns over the Bridge of the Broken Treaty, where Sarsfield and his men covenanted with William for protection to the property and the religious freedom of Irish Catholics, and then took ship for France--first of the Wild Geese, founders of the Irish Brigade--leaving no guardians but honour and justice to enforce the sanction of the treaty, guardians that were of no avail. Much has been written of the siege of Derry and in praise of its heroic defenders: but too little is known of Limerick's resistance, when the French officer, whom James II had left in charge, declared that the walls could be battered down with roasted apples, and Sarsfield answered that defended they should and must be. You can see the mark of William's cannon balls on the old wall near the convent hospital east of the town: single marks on the dark limestone here and there, but at the angle of the wall, where the Black Battery stood, and where a breach was made, there is clear trace still of the desperate assault--from which William's best troops, after they had effected a lodgment, were finally driven back pell-mell. From Limerick the West Clare Railway (whose vagaries have been made more famous than I ever knew them to deserve) will carry you through Ennis, passing near Bunratty Castle, Quin Abbey, and many another place of fame, to the coast where Lahinch offers one of the most popular golf links in Ireland. It is a wild wind-swept coast, a wild surf beats on the strand that divides Lahinch from Liscannor, and north of it are the great cliffs of Moher. Lisdoonvarna is near by, a spa much frequented by Irishmen, more specially by the Irish clergy. But the favourite place of all who visit this part of Munster is Kilkee, a little watering-place set above steep cliffs on which the Atlantic swings in with all its weight. There is no other place known to me in western Ireland where you can find decent seaside quarters in a spot that meets the full force and splendour of the sea. And from the Clare coast near by--even out of the window of a railway carriage--I saw one of the greatest prospects that eye could look on. To the south, some thirty or forty miles distant, the Dingle peninsula stretched outward, with the huge mass of Brandon rising out of the blue: but away north-west I could see very clear the three island heights of Aran, and east of them the whole group of Connemara mountains, beyond which again, away up into Mayo, the shapes of Mweelrea and Croagh Patrick were dim yet recognizable in outline.