il 6th, 1892, six thousand mackerel
were despatched to the English market. The weather during much of the
season was stormy and unfavourable, but on May 18th, seventy-three
thousand three hundred and fifty mackerel were sent to Galway, thirty
miles away by sea, and were forwarded thence by two special trains.
The Midland and Western Railway, under the management of Mr. Joseph
Tatlow, has been prompt, plucky, and obliging, and runs the fish to
Dublin as fast as they arrive in Galway. During the season of ten
weeks the experienced Arklow crews made on an average L316 per boat,
and the greenhorns who were learning the business earned about L70 per
boat, although they could not fish at all at the beginning of the
season. The total number of mackerel packed on the ice-hulk amounted
to the respectable total of two hundred and ninety-nine thousand four
hundred and eighty. The "teeming treasures of the deep" were not left
untouched on this occasion, though, doubtless, "still the Irish
peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke."

Mr. Balfour's benefactions have not been confined to the Aran Islands.
Every available fishing place from top to bottom of the whole west
coast has been similarly aided, and the value of their produce has
increased from next to nothing to something like fifty thousand
pounds per month. This on the authority of Father P.J. McPhilpin,
parish priest of Kilronane, Innishmore, who said:--

"We never had a Chief Secretary who so quickly grasped the position,
who so rapidly saw what was the right thing to do, and who did it so
thoroughly and so promptly. Strange to say the Liberals are always the
most illiberal. When we get anything for Ireland it somehow always
seems to come from the Tories."

Having been carried from Galway to the ice-hulk in Killeany Bay, and
having been duly put ashore in a boat, one of the first persons I saw
was Father Thomas Flatley, coadjutor of Father McPhilpin, an earnest
Home Ruler, like his superior, and like him a great admirer of Mr.
Balfour. Father Flatley wore a yachting cap, or I might have sheered
off under all sail--the biretta inspires me with affright--but his
nautical rig reassured me, and yawing a little from my course, I put
up my helm and boarded him. Too late I saw the black flag--I mean the
white choker--but there was nothing of the pirate about Father Tom. He
was kindly, courteous, earnest, humorous, hospitable, and full of
Latin quotations. Bef