ng on to me!" Father Walker himself
thought the trip across the "sound" to Tory Island rather a ticklish
piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little
corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them
must be capable of seamanship. Most of these islands, notably
Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the
people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it
not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation
of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought
to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic
penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull
Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found
in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the
island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island,
and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that
the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at
some early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away
some of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawbone
of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite
pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well
formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as
well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home,
after a most agreeable evening, promised to send me some specimens of
their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this
industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here
from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure
much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers
themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work
himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how
much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of
the dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men."

BARON'S COURT, _Wednesday, Feb. 8._--Since last night I have travelled
from one extreme to the other of Irish life--from the desolation of the
Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful
demesne of Baron's Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a
capital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railwa