INTRODUCTION.

THAT Lough Erne, with its fifty-two miles of unbroken navigable course, its varied and beautiful scenery, its three-hundred-andodd islands, its attractions for the artist, antiquary, geologist, botanist, angler, fowler, yachtsman, or ordinary tourist, should have remained almost to this day but rarely visited by strangers, is a circumstance which can only be accounted for by the remoteness of its situation from any very considerable town, and in some degree by the want upon its waters of steamboat accommodation. Now, however, all this glorious country may be said to have been brought within twelve hours of the crowded millions in the workshop towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Well appointed and commodious steamboats glide through its breadth of waters as through a sea, and a large portion of its course owing chiefly to the enterprise of a single individual, has once again become a highway for travellers from the eastern to the north-western counties of Ireland. The words of the poet Spenser, written nearly three hundred years ago, may be applied to the districts under notice, even at the present day: “And sure it is yet a most beautiful and sweet country as any under heaven, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish, abundantly sprinkled with many sweet islands and goodly lakes, like little inland seas, that will carry even ships upon their waters; adorned with goodly woods even fit for building houses and ships, so commodiously, as that if some princes in the world, had them they would soon hope to be lord of all the seas, and ere long of all the world; also full of very good ports and havens opening upon England, inviting us to come unto them to see what excellent commodities that country can afford; besides the soyle it selfe most fertile, fit to yield all kind of fruit that shall be committed thereunto; and lastly, the

heavens most milde and temperate, though somewhat more moist than the parts towards the east." All that the author of the "Faery Queen," in the above passage, describes as existing in Ireland in his time we still possess; but we can promise our visitors many enjoyments such as even the imagination of the poet never dreamt of, and which are the natural result of the advancement made by the world in more of the arts than one during the last couple of centuries. We hope to be able to show that there is no taste for the picturesque or beautiful which may not be amply gratified upon the shores or in the neighbourhood of the historic Erne. We shall endeavour not only to point out localities and scenes of interest, but also to inform our readers of the best way of arriving at such places, whether by boat, on foot, or by cars, &c. The antiquary, who would trace the history of his race through monuments which have descended. to our time from the earliest period of society in Erin, shal have his attention drawn in numerous instances to the

"Cairn's gray pyramid,

Where bones of mighty chiefs lie hid,"

to the wondrous cromlech, and so-called druidical circle, to the giant's grave, pillar-stone, or Thuatha-de-Danaan rath, to the finest of all the round towers of Ireland, as well as to the cell of the early Christian missionary, or the storied cross of somewhat later times. The geologist shall be introduced to caves the mystery and grandeur of which might have suggested the lines of our national poet:

"So fathomless, so full of gloom,

No eye could pierce the void between ;
It seemed a place where ghouls might come
With their foul banquets from the tomb,
And in its caverns feed unseen.
Like distant thunder from below,
The sound of many torrents came;
Too deep for eye or ear to know,
If 't were the sea's imprisoned flow,
Or floods of everlasting flame."