But the worst had not yet come. It was in 1847
that the highest point of misery and death had been reached. Skibbereen,
to be sure, ceased to attract so much attention as it had been
previously doing, but the people of that devoted town had received much
relief; besides, there were now fewer mouths to fill there, so many were
closed in death, at the Windmill-hill, in the Workhouse grounds, and in
the churchyard of Abbeystrowry. Instead of one, Ireland had now many
Skibbereens. In short, the greater part of it might be regarded as one
vast Skibbereen. In the Autumn of 1846, the famine, which all saw
advancing, seized upon certain districts of the South and West; but as
ulcers, which first appear in isolated spots upon the body, enlarge
until, touching each other, they become confluent, so had the famine,
limited in its earlier stages to certain localities, now spread itself
over the entire country. Hence, it is not in any new forms of suffering
amongst the famine-stricken people that its increasing horrors are to be
looked for: it is in its universality, and in the deadly effects of a
new scourge--fever--which was not only manifesting itself throughout the
land at this time, but had already risen to an alarming height--a thing
not to be wondered at, because it is the certain offspring, as well as
the powerful auxiliary, of famine.
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