Some years ago, during a visit to Westport, I received sad corroboration of the truth of these statements.  I met several persons who had witnessed the Famine in that town and its neighbourhood, and their relation of the scenes which fell under their notice not only sustained, but surpassed, if possible, the facts given in the above communications.  A priest who was stationed at Westport during the Famine, was still there at the period of my visit.  During that dreadful time, the people, he told me, who wandered about the country in search of food, frequently took possession of empty houses, which they easily found; the inmates having died, or having gone to the Workhouse, where such existed.  A brother and sister, not quite grown up, took possession of a house in this way, in the Parish of Westport.  One of them became ill; the other continued to go for the relief where it was given out, but this one soon fell ill also.  No person heeded them.  Everyone had too much to do for himself.  They died.  Their dead bodies were only discovered by the offensive odour which issued from the house in which they died, and in which they had become putrefied.  It was found necessary to make an aperture for ventilation on the roof before anyone would venture in.  The neighbours dug a hole in the hard floor of the cabin with a crowbar to receive their remains.  And this was their coffinless grave!

This same priest administered in one day the last Sacrament to thirty-three young persons in the Workhouse of Westport; and of these there were not more than two or three alive next morning.

Mr. Egan, who at the date of my visit was Clerk of the Union, held the same office during the Famine.  The Workhouse was built to accommodate one thousand persons.  There were two days a-week for admissions.  With the house crowded far beyond its capacity, he had repeatedly seen as many as three thousand persons seeking admission on a single day.  Knowing, as we do, the utter dislike the Irish peasantry had in those times to enter the Workhouse, this is a terrible revelation of the Famine; for it is a recorded fact that many of the people died of want in their cabins, and suffered their children to die, rather than go there.  Those who were not admitted—­and they were, of course, the great majority—­having no homes to return to, lay down and died in Westport and its suburbs.  Mr. Egan, pointing to the wall opposite the Workhouse gate, said:  “There is where they sat down, never to rise again.  I have seen there of a morning as many as eight corpses of those miserable beings, who had died during the night.  Father G——­ (then in Westport) used to be anointing them as they lay exhausted along the walls and streets, dying of hunger and fever."[231]