The Green Forest tribune., 1912-07-19
TELLS IF IRELAND
View of Killarney 2,000 Feet
 Above Sea Level.
Scene Forms Regular Panorama of Beauty-Mountain, Lake, Moor and Meadow Combine to Make Pic
 ture Rarely Seen.

Killarney-Killarney has been so often and so vividly described by po- cts and other literary lights, and its beauties so often reflected by the painter, that attempts to say anything original about 1t would be almost an impossibility.
 When one speaks or writes of Xiii larney it means to those who have travelled extensively that practically the last word has been said in defining natural beauty or artistic surround ings. Set amid a series of surround ing hills, the highest of which rises to more than 5000 feet above the sea level, the scene of which the ancient town is the center forms a regular panorama of beauty. Mountain, lake, moor and meadow combine to make a picture rarely seen, even by those who have travelled in many lands. A climate mild as it is possible to conceive, sunshine and showers, or as a distinguished poet has described it, smiles and tears, alternating, the wind from the noun
 
 of the lakes, Killarney is not alone beauty spot in nature, but health re- sort as we'll.
 The traveller walking down to the waters edge from the neighborhood of the Victoria hotel at the lower end of the lake, when the sun rises in the morning or sets in the evening, will io+, which will finger in the memory while he lives
 A mile or so across the lake from Innisfallen, Ross castle is in view, ore of the most picturesque of the ancient ruins around Killarney. Its tall quad rangular tower, or keep, was origin ally inclosed by outworks built by one of the family of O'Donoghue Ross and believed to date from the fourteenth century. It's spiral stair Of stone leading to the top commands an inter- esting view of the lower lake, the is- lands and the mountains all around. Almost beneath it are the remains of the old Abbey of Muekross, founded in 1440 by the Mccarthy family on
 
 destroyed by fire in 1192.
 The ruins of the church and con- vent, measuring about 100 feet in length, and consisting of choir, nave, transept, tower and cloister, still re- maiping nearly perfect, despite the lapse of centuries, with a beautiful quadrangle of arches, some with point oJ md ioi, stitute one of the most picturesque of all the Irish ruins. In the center of the square within the abbey is yew tree, said to be as old as the abbey it. self.
 One of the quaintest of the tradi- tions connected with the mountains environing Killarney is associated with the Devils Punch Bowl' and Mangerton mountain.
 Rowed through the lakes by one of the veteran boatmen of the town, he enlivened the excursion by series of stories which several of his lis teners felt would not have done any great discredit to the late Baron Mun- chausen.
 HIS FerslOH ol WAdI lHe DeVl1 $ Punch BowP' meant, as contained in the legend still credited in the local ity, his >own country gets too hot when his own country gets too hot for him, goes up to the punch bowl and takes his whisky hot there, or, as the old oarsman said, "Or maybe a Tom and Jerry, as we used to call it when I lived in Boston,
 When the traveller has rowed across the lakes, and listened to one of these