On the other side of the bay a long point of land protrudes across the horizon, and there it was that the French troops intended to land under Wolfe Tone and General Hoche on Dec. 26, 1796. There were 17 ships of the line, 13 frigates, 5 corvettes, 2 gunboats, and 6 transports, with about 14,000 men and 45,000 stands of arms, and it was expected that the news of their landing would be the signal for an uprising of the Irish people. Simon White, who lived near the point where the landing was to be made, was a man of quick movements and energy, and as soon as the fleet was sighted he saddled his horse and rode direct to Cork--sixty-five miles--in half a dozen hours to notify the military commander and other authorities of the invasion. For that the king made him the Earl of Bantry and gave him a strip of land around the bay twenty-two miles on one side and twenty-two miles on the other, stretching back into the mountains an average of six miles. The title has lasted through three generations, but has expired because the third Earl of Bantry left no son to wear it when he died a few years ago. Providence intervened, however, on the side of the English, and averted what might have been a disastrous struggle with France, with Ireland as the battlefield, as well as a civil war for the overthrow of British authority. A storm came up and dispersed the fleet. When the wind subsided, a dense fog overspread Bantry Bay and the ocean. When the air cleared the ships were so scattered that each sailed away on its own account during the next fortnight, and one by one they returned to the harbors of France. General Hoche, in the _Fraternitie_, finally reached Rochelle, after several narrow escapes, with his ship in a sinking condition. Several of the largest ships went upon the rocks, and about eighteen hundred sailors and soldiers perished. No Frenchman trod upon Irish soil with the exception of a lieutenant and seven seamen, who were sent out in a small boat from one of the ships during the fog to reconnoiter, and, running aground, were captured by James O'Sullivan. Bantry Bay is a magnificent inlet twenty-one miles long, and with an average breadth of four miles and an average depth of sixty fathoms, without a shoal or sandbank or any other peril to navigation. It is completely sheltered from the weather and is considered the finest harbor in Ireland. It is the rendezvous of the British North Atlantic fleet and the fleet of the channel, which come here regularly to practice maneuvers, to correct their compasses and regulate their range finders and do light repairs. The only town on the bay is a village of the same name, which has been described as a seaport without trade, a harbor without shipping, and a fishery without a market. There is a convent, a monastery, and a factory for the manufacture of Irish tweeds. [Illustration: GLENGARIFF BRIDGE]