Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and much interested in the prospect of their development.  He told us that a practical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking a lease of the quarries—­or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over sixty or seventy miles of Donegal—­from the agent of Lord Conyngham.  This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region.  Father Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both practicable and desirable here.

In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be particularly abundant here.  It would be a great thing, Father Walker thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without it.

He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are derived.  This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M’Fadden’s income at Gweedore, which Father M’Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly exaggerated.  Father Walker has been parish priest at Burtonport for about nine years.  In all that time the highest sum reached in one year by the stipend has been L560; this sum having to be divided between the parish priest, who received L280, and two curates receiving L140 each.  The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below L480, and Father Walker thinks L520 a fair average, giving L260 to the parish priest, and L130 each to his curates.  Where there are only two priests in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the curate one-third of the stipend.

The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in this province of Ireland.  One general and invariable rule indeed exists throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer the Holy Sacrifice, pro populo, for the whole people, without fee or reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven times a year.