Accounts of its rapid
increase soon filled the public journals, and the gloomiest forebodings
of the total loss of the crop of 1846, immediately took hold of the
public mind. Here are a few specimens of the manner in which the
dreadful calamity was announced: "Where no disease was apparent a few
days ago all are now black." "Details are needless--the calamity is
everywhere." "The failure this year is universal; for miles a person may
proceed in any direction, without perceiving an exception to the awful
destruction." The South and West suffered more in 1845 than the North;
but this year the destroyer swept over Ulster the same as the other
provinces. "We have had an opportunity," says a writer, "of observing
the state of the potato crop from one end of the county Antrim to
another, and saw only one uniform gloomy evidence of destruction. The
potatoes everywhere exhibit the appearance of a lost crop." The same
account was given of Tyrone, Monaghan, Londonderry, and, in fact, of the
entire province. On the 18th of August, the fearful announcement was
made, that there was not one sound potato to be found in the whole
county of Meath! Again: "The failure of the potato crop in Galway is
universal; in Roscommon there is not a hundred weight of good potatoes
within ten miles round the town.
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