plain of Cong, which is washed by the waters of Lough Mask and Lough
Corrib, close to where the long monotonous midland plain of Ireland
becomes broken, changes into that region of high mountains and low-lying
valleys, now called Connemara, but which in earlier days was always
known as Iar Connaught.

It is a wild scene even now, not very much less so than it must have
been when this old and half-mythical Battle of the West was fought and
won. A grey plain, "stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts,"
broken into grassy ridges, and starred at intervals with pools,
repeating the larger glitter of the lake hard by. Over the whole surface
of this tumbled plain rise, at intervals, great masses of rock, some
natural, but others artificially up-tilted cromlechs and dolmens,
menhirs and cairns--whitened by lichen scrawls, giving them often in
uncertain light the effect of so many undecipherable inscriptions,
written in a long-forgotten tongue.

From the position of the battle-field it has been made out to their own
satisfaction by those who have studied it on the spot, that the Firbolgs
must have taken up a fortified position upon the hill called Ben-levi; a
good strategic position unquestionably, having behind it the whole of
the Mayo mountains into which to retreat in case of defeat. The Danaans,
on the other hand, advancing from the plains of Meath, took up their
station upon the hill known as Knockmaa[1], standing by itself about
five miles from the present town of Tuam, on the top of which stands a
great cairn, believed to have been in existence even then--a legacy of
some yet earlier and more primitive race which inhabited the country,
and, therefore, possibly the oldest record of humanity to-day extant
in Ireland.