It was quite true, and the skin dealer's wife told him this could
not be a solitary case, "as she never remembered so many asses' skins
coming for sale as within the month just past."[227]
Mr. Forster, in his report to the Society of Friends, says of the
condition of Westport in January, 1847, that it was a strange and
fearful sight, like what we read of beleaguered cities; its streets
crowded with gaunt wanderers, sauntering to and fro, with hopeless air
and hunger-struck look; a mob of starved, almost naked women were around
the poorhouse, clamouring for soup-tickets; our inn, the head-quarters
of the road engineer and pay clerks, was beset by a crowd of beggars for
work.[228] The agent of the British Association, Count Strezelecki,
writing from Westport at this time, says, no pen could describe the
distress by which he was surrounded; it had reached such an extreme
degree of intensity that it was above the power of exaggeration. You
may, he adds, believe anything which you hear and read, because what I
actually see surpasses what I ever read of past and present
calamities.[229]
The weather in March became mild, and even warm and sunny; some little
comfort, one would suppose, to those without food or fuel.
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