As happened in
other places, no persons attended the funerals; those who were still
alive were so exhausted that they were unable to inter the dead, and the
duty of doing so was frequently left to casual passers-by.
About the middle of February, Commander Caffin, of Her Majesty's ship
"Scourge," visited Skull, in company with the rector, the Rev. Robert
Traill Hall. After having entered a few houses, the Commander said to
the Revd. gentleman, "My pre-conceived ideas of your misery seem as a
dream to me compared with the reality." And yet Captain Caffin had only
time to see the cabins on the roadside, in which the famine was not so
terrible as it was up among the hills and fastnesses, where, in one
wretched hovel, whose two windows were stuffed with straw, the Rev. Mr.
Hall found huddled together sixteen human beings. They did not, however,
belong to one family--three wretched households were congregated into
this miserable abode. Out of the sixteen, two only could be said to be
able to work; and on the exertions of those "two poor pallid objects"
had the rest to depend. Eight of the others were crowded into one
pallet,--it could not be called a bed, being formed of a little straw,
which scarcely kept them from the cold mud floor.
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