IRONHORSE 103

40,000 were totally dependent on poor relief in 'County Ros-
common alone, while the streets of Cork were thronged with
five thousand homeless wretches in the last stages of famine. By
February the number had doubled. Men, women and children
filled their stomachs with cabbage leaves and turnip tops: hun-
dreds died weekly in every rural union. In the remoter
villages beyond even the feeble reach of the Government, the
dead lay in the roads and ditches unburied.

In a letter that Christmas to the Duke of Wellington, a local
Justice of the Peace described a visit to the district of Skibbereen.
On reaching the village of South Reen with supplies of bread,
he was surprised to find the hamlet apparently deserted.

"I altered some of the hovels to ascertain the cause, and
the scenes that presented themselves were such as no tongue
or pen can convey the slightest idea of.

"In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all
appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy
straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horse-cloth,
and their wretched' legs hanging about naked above the
knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moan-
ing they were alive. They were in fever—four children, a
woman and what had once been a man.

"It is impossible to go through the details. ... In a few
minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 of such phantoms,
such frightful spectres as no words can describe. By far
the greater number were delirious, either from famine 01
from fever. Their demoniac yells are still ringing in my
ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain.
My heart sickens at the recital, but I must go on. In another
case my clothes were nearly torn off in my endeavours to
escape from a throng of pestilence around, when my neck-
doth was seized from behind by a grip which compelled
me to turn. I found myself grasped by a woman with an
infant just born in her arms, and the remains of a filthy
sack across her loins—the sole covering of herself and babe.
The same morning the police opened a house on the adjoin-
ing lands which was observed shut for many days, and two
frozen corpses were found lying upon the mud floor, half-
devoured by the rats....

"A mother, herself in fever, was seen the same day to