the roads.  Some were leaving the house, preferring to die in their own hovels rather than in the Poorhouse.  Their bedding consisted of dirty straw, in which they were laid in rows on the floor; even as many as six persons being crowded under one rug; and we did not see a blanket at all.  The rooms were hardly bearable for filth.  The living and the dying were stretched side by side beneath the same miserable covering!  No wonder that disease and pestilence were filling the infirmary, and that the pale haggard countenances of the poor boys and girls told of sufferings which it was impossible to contemplate without the deepest commiseration and pity.”

The carelessness and neglect of their duty by Irish landlords have so often come before us during the progress of the Famine, that it is a pleasure to meet with something worth quoting on the other side.  “Throughout Donegal we found,” says Mr. Tuke, “the resident proprietors doing much for their suffering tenantry; in many cases, all that landlords could do for their relief and assistance.  Several of them had obtained loans under the late Drainage Act, and with this or private resources are employing large numbers of labourers for the improvement of their estates.  We met with several who had one hundred men employed in this manner.  Many of these landlords, as well as the clergy, are most assiduously working in all ways in their power.  They have imported large quantities of meal and rice, which they sell at prime cost, there being in many districts no dealers to supply those articles; and are making soup at their own houses, and dispensing daily to their famishing neighbours."[236]

In the South, after Skibbereen, Skull, its neighbour, seems to have suffered most.  To cross from Cape Clear to Skull—­partly rowing, partly sailing—­in a stiff breeze is very exciting, and might well cause apprehension, but for the crew of athletic Cape men, or Capers, as the people of the mainland call them, in whose hands you have placed your safety.  With them you are perfectly secure.  Those hardy, simple-minded people are as used to the sea as a herdsman is to green fields.  Even when they are not actually upon its stormy bosom, they are usually to be seen in groups about the little harbour, leaning against the rocks, quietly smoking their pipes, watching the tide and the weather, and discussing the proper moment for “going out.”  It is some five miles from Cape Clear to the town of Skull.  The distance is not long, but without skill and local knowledge the passage is dangerous, for what seems only a light gale elsewhere makes the sea almost tempestuous among the bluffs and rocky islands of this wild coast, where many a foundering barque has been rescued from destruction by the brave and trusty oarsmen of Cape Clear.  Leaving Roaring-water bay to the north-east, and getting in shelter of the land, a church tower, humble in design and proportions, rises in the midst of a graveyard, crowded in one part with tombstones, and almost entirely