[Illustration: _Photos, Cuthbert, Valencia._ Gannets on Little Skelligs.]
[Illustration: Southern Hotel, Waterville.]
The road leads across the Inny, and we enter the little town by the pleasantly-situated Butler Arms Hotel. On going further, fronting the shore line, we pass the Bay View Hotel, and, following a bend in the hill, come suddenly in view of the beautiful Lough Currane, beside which, in the midst of plantations, more like a home than a well-equipped hostelry, which it is, the ~Southern Hotel~ is built. Lough Currane is eight miles in circumference, and its shores are fretted with thousands of inlets. Through the windows of the Hotel, a charming view is had of the mountains which encircle the lake. On one side green slopes and pleasantly wooded heights meet the eye, and on the other, old familiar grey-faced mountains, with their heads raised on high among the clouds, shining, changing, and fading in the silver mists. The surface of the lake, calm-faced and deep-welled, here and there lifts up to be admired beautiful islands. Here a saint made his temporal home, and in Church Island is the beehive cell where St. Finian prayed, "in whose orisons were all our sins remembered." The ruins of the sixth century church deserve the attention of the antiquary. Away at the head of Lough Currane is Coppal, where sea trout and small brown trout abound. It, too, has charms all its own, in parts wild and untamed, but again, calm as the race of a sleeping child. Full information as to the flies suitable for the lake, and the places well to troll, may be had from the best known angler in Kerry, Teigue M'Carthy. Like Sir Roger de Coverley's friend, Will Wimble, he can tie a fly "to a miracle," and he is an enthusiastic devotee of the "gentle art." Besides the attractions for fishermen, there are thousands of acres of shooting in the vicinity. There is plenty of opportunity and accommodation for bathing by the bay, and a new Golf Links, laid out under the best professional advice, affords a further source of healthful amusement. Over the hills from Waterville the pre-historic remains of Staigue Fort may be visited. It is the best example of cyclopean stone forts that remains in Ireland, and by authoritative antiquaries is said to be at least 2,000 years old.