I shall never forget the scene which I that
night witnessed: mothers striving, by the heat of their own persons, to
preserve the lives of their little ones; women stretching out their
fleshless arms, imploring for food and shelter; old men tottering to the
destination where they were to receive shelter. The odour from the
clothes and persons of those poor people was dreadfully offensive, and
the absence of active complaints clearly showed that in many the hope of
restoration was not to be expected. On my visiting this scene next
morning, eleven human beings were dead."[191]
Some twenty years after the famine-scourge had passed away, and over two
millions of the Irish people with it, I visited Skibbereen. Approaching
the town from the Cork side, it looks rather an important place. It is
the seat of the Catholic bishop of Ross, and attention is immediately
arrested by a group of fine ecclesiastical buildings, on an elevated
plateau to the left, just beside the road, or street, I should rather
say, for those buildings are the beginning of the town; they consist of
a cathedral and a convent, with very commodious schools, and a pretty
gothic chapel. On the other side of the way is the schoolhouse, in shade
of which the military were concealed on the day the Caharagh labourers
invaded Skibbereen.
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