[Footnote 1:  Transactions during the Famine in Ireland, Appendix III.]

The same benevolent gentleman describes the domestic scenes he saw in Connaught, where the poor Celts were carried off in thousands:—­

’We entered a cabin.  Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly; their little limbs, on removing a portion of the covering, perfectly emaciated; eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation.  Crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance.  It stirred not nor noticed us.  On some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shrivelled old woman, imploring us to give her something, baring her limbs partly to show how the skin hung loose from her bones, as soon as she attracted our attention.  Above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman with sunken cheeks, a mother, I have no doubt, who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries; but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair.  Many cases were widows, whose husbands had been recently taken off by the fever, and thus their only pittance obtained from the public works was entirely cut off.  In many the husbands or sons were prostrate under that horrid disease—­the result of long-continued famine and low living—­in which first the limbs and then the body swell most frightfully, and finally burst.  We entered upwards of fifty of these tenements.  The scene was invariably the same, differing in little but the manner of the sufferers, or of the groups occupying the several corners within.  The whole number was often not to be distinguished, until the eye having adapted itself to the darkness, they were pointed out, or were heard, or some filthy bundle of rags and straw was seen to move.  Perhaps the poor children presented the most piteous and heart-rending spectacle.  Many were too weak to stand, their little limbs attenuated, except where the frightful swellings had taken the place of previous emaciation.  Every infantile expression had entirely departed; and, in some reason and intelligence had evidently flown.  Many were remnants of families, crowded together in one cabin; orphaned little relatives taken in by the equally destitute, and even strangers—­for these poor people are kind to each other, even to the end.  In one cabin was a sister, just dying, lying beside her little brother, just dead.  I have worse than this to relate; but it is useless to multiply details, and they are, in fact, unfit.’

In December, 1846, Father Mathew wrote to Mr. Trevelyan, then secretary of the treasury, that men, women, and children were gradually wasting away.  They filled their stomachs with cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, &c., to appease the cravings of hunger.  There were then more than 5,000 half-starved wretches from the country begging in the streets of Cork.  When utterly exhausted, they crawled to the workhouse to die.  The average of deaths in that union was then over a hundred a week.