The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: March sixteenth, visiting the mountain where St. Patrick prayed.

The Patrick whose memory Irish Catholics celebrate tomorrow was born in Roman Britain in the year 389 A.D. Captured and sold into slavery at age 16, he spent six years herding sheep in the remote hills of western Ireland, in what is now County Mayo.

Eventually, Patrick escaped to the continent, where he received a mission from God: to convert the Irish to Christianity. Twenty years later, he returned to the land of his captivity as a Church Bishop. Drawn to the cone-shaped mountain at the head of Clew Bay on the remote Atlantic coast, he set up a diocese and slowly converted the local Celtic clans. It's clear Patrick was an eloquent speaker. Legend credits him with charming all of Ireland's snakes to leap to their deaths from the mountain's summit.

Clew Bay remains a remote but beguiling expanse of water, dotted with some 365 islands, one for each day of the year. A paved road lines the bay, twisting through tiny fishing villages. The town of Westport, planned and built two centuries ago, has retained its graceful, Georgian charms. After Newport, the road swings west, past medieval ruins at Carrigahooley and Burrishoole before ending at Achill Head, a granite promontory beyond which lies only open Atlantic.

William Makepeace Thackery, author of Vanity Fair, once called Clew Bay "the most beautiful view in the world. Seeing this place", he wrote, "is an event in one's mind." That was true for Saint Patrick over 1500 years ago and it remains so today.

FMI For information, contact the Irish Tourist Board at 212-418-0800 or www.ireland.travel.ie or the Westport, County Mayo Office - dial 011-353-098-25711.