This road is one of the boundaries about the region of the Twelve Pins, through which wild sanctuary no made track for wheels has been driven. You have the Pins (or "Bens" rather) on the south as you go from Leenane to Maam; on the west as you go from Maam to Maam Cross; on the north from Maam Cross to Recess, and on the east as you take the beautiful road from Recess by Lough Inagh, and so through the defile at Kylemore, where the great house stands with long terrace facing on to the exquisite lower lake, approached by a roadway along which are mile-long hedges of crimson fuchsia. Kylemore means the Big Wood, and the name is natural enough, for here only in Connemara is there any considerable growth of trees; the country is too bare and wild for them. At Carna, on the shore of Galway Bay, can be seen the lamentable remains of an experimental plantation, replaced now by a new and much more successful planting of the New Zealand flax, which with its yucca-like fronds grows very freely on the west, and gives some hope of a new industry.
But beyond Maam, on the shores of Corrib, is wooding and to spare; none denser, more undisturbed. About Cong are the famous woodcock covers where Lord Ardilaun's guests have killed five hundred birds in a day. Almost every island on the lake (and there is said to be an island for every day in the year) is set thick with leafage, and there are those who claim that Corrib where it broadens out between Cong and Oughterard is a rival to Killarney. I do not seek to decide such a contention; but the place is far richer in antiquarian interest than Killarney, and infinitely less tourist-ridden.
[Illustration: A FISHERMAN'S HOME UNDER DIAMOND MOUNTAIN, BALLYNAKILL BAY]
It is no business of mine here to write about hotels; but still one wishes to show what is practicable for those who may care to explore this great line of western lakes. By far the easiest way to go is by the little steamer from Galway to Cong--a run of some thirty miles, done very leisurely. There is a comfortable inn at Cong: a larger one three or four miles off at Clonbur; at Ballinrobe, I suppose, quarters can be had, and certainly in Tourmakeady on the west shore of Mask. If, however, you have followed the line from Recess to Letterfrack, and so to Leenane, then there is an admirable possibility for varying the journey. Take the road from Leenane to Maam. Halfway down it, near Kilmilkin, another road turns off steeply to the left so that you still contrive to skirt the Devil's Mother; and after a mile or two through bog, it goes corkscrewing down a woeful hill, and you are in the basin of Lough na Fooey, high among the hills of Joyce Country. Beyond the lake the road climbs again to emerge from that basin, and you pelt away down the long slope of Maamtrasna, the valley at the head of upper Lough Mask. Savage memories dwell there; memories of killings between peasants in the land war of the 'eighties, memories of high diplomatic slaughter when the heir to the earldom of Ulster was done away with in Illaun an Iarla, a little island which your driver will show you. The Stauntons who carried out that killing kept a bad name from it through centuries of Irish tradition.