The Lakes of Killarney are three in number and, strangely enough, have no romantic names. They really are only one lake, the Lower, Upper, and Middle lakes being connected by narrow channels only a few yards long. The three are thirty miles in circumference and the extreme end of Upper Lake is eleven miles from the extreme end of Lower Lake. The Lower Lake is the largest, being about five and a half miles long and two and a half miles wide at the widest place; Middle Lake and Upper Lake are each about two miles long at the greatest length and about three-quarters of a mile wide at the widest point. They all contain numerous islands of different sizes. Somebody has counted them, and I think has found sixty-five, large and small. One of them, Innisfallen Island, was occupied by a monastery back in St. Patrick's time, and the famous "Annals of Innisfallen," one of the earliest and most authentic of the ancient Irish histories, was written there by the monks, who began the manuscript at least twelve hundred years ago. The original is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and is one of the most valuable manuscripts in the world, with fifty-seven leaves, closely covered with beautiful penmanship. The earlier portion consists of extracts from the Old Testament and a history of the world down to the arrival of St. Patrick in 432. From that time it treats exclusively of Irish affairs, terminating with the year 1319. It is evidently a record of certain facts which came to the knowledge of the monks of Innisfallen Abbey during a period of nearly seven hundred years until, in 1320, the abbey was plundered and the monks massacred by Maolduin O'Donaghue and the MacCarthys. It has since remained in ruins, a few broken walls covered with ivy, which are visited regularly by Augustinian brothers who come here on pilgrimages. The lakes are surrounded almost entirely by a range of mountains, except on the north, where they break into low hills. There are six peaks rising over two thousand feet, including Carran-Tuel (3,314 feet), the highest mountain in Ireland; Mangerton (2,756 feet), Purple Mountain (2,739), Devil's Punch Bowl (2,665), Toomies (2,500), and Torc (2,100). There are several other mountains which approach these in height, forming a mighty barrier between County Cork and County Kerry, and protecting Killarney from the cold southwest winds of the ocean. The Devil's Punch Bowl is an extinct volcano, and gets its name from an enormous crater near its summit which is filled with water and fed from subterranean springs. There is no bottom so far as people have been able to discover. The crater reaches down into the bowels of the earth somewhere and furnishes an inexhaustible reservoir of pure, cold water, which is now piped down to the village of Killarney. [Illustration: UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY.]