than theirs would dig the pit, and put down the uncoffined body.
One Sabbath, when I was in Erris, the day was so stormy that the church service was suspended. A barefooted woman, who one year before had called to sell milk and kept a fine dairy, came into the house where I was, and calling me by name, said: "Will ye give me something to buy a coffin to put on my husband; he died yesterday on me, and it would be a pity to put him in the ground without a board, and he is so swelled, ma'am, not a ha'porth of his legs or belly but is ready to burst, and but a fivepence-halfpenny could I gather, and the little boys are ashamed to go out and ask the charity for him."
This is an illustration not only of the state into which famine has thrown the country, but the apathy of feeling which the most tender-hearted people on the globe manifested. A woman compelled to go out in a most perilous storm, upon a wild sea-coast, unprotected by clothes, and without a morsel of food for twenty-four hours, to procure a coffin for her husband, who had died by starvation!
THE SOLDIERS OF BELMULLET.
Among the marvels and dreadfuls of Erris, the Queen's soldiers certainly deserve a place in history. Government in her mercy had deposited in a shop some tons of Indian meal, to be sold or given out, as the Commissariat should direct, for the benefit of the people. This meal was in statu quo, and hunger was
