"[237]
A correspondent of the _Southern Reporter_, writing from Ballydehob
during the first days of January, gives the most piteous account of that
village; every house he entered exhibited the same characteristics,--no
clothing, no food, starvation in the looks of young and old. In a
tumble-down cabin resembling a deserted forge, he found a miserable man
seated at a few embers, with a starved-looking dog beside him, that was
not able to crawl. The visitor asked him if he were sick; he answered
that he was not, but having got swelled legs working on the roads, he
had to give up; he had not tasted food for two days; his family had gone
begging about the country, and he had no hope of ever seeing them again.
Efforts were still being made at this place to get coffins for the dead,
but with indifferent success. There were not coffins for half the
people; many were tied up in straw, and so interred. This writer
mentions what he seems to have regarded as an ingenious contrivance of
the Galeen relief committee, namely, the use of the coffin with the
slide or hinged bottom, but such coffins had been, previously used in
other places. He relates a touching incident which occurred at
Ballydehob, at the time of his visit.
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