time,
says: "Want and misery are in every face; and the labourers returning
from the relief works look like men walking in a funeral procession, so
slow is their step and so dejected their appearance."

The South and West were the portions of the country in which the Famine
committed its earliest ravages; but before the close of 1846
considerable parts of Leinster and Ulster were invaded by it, and deaths
from starvation began to be recorded in those comparatively wealthy
provinces. In Maryborough, a man named William Fitzpatrick died of
starvation in the beginning of December. He and his family were for a
considerable time in a state of destitution. He tried to earn or obtain
food for them, but without success. At the inquest, his wife said that,
when she pressed him to eat such scanty food as they could occasionally
procure, he often said to her, "Eat it yourself and the children." A
kind neighbour, having heard how badly off this poor family was, gave an
order for some bread; but, as occurred in so many cases, this act of
Christian charity came too late. Fitzpatrick was unable to eat, and so
he died. At Enniskillen, a poor girl, who had been sent for Indian meal,
fell down near her dwelling and expired. She had not gone out more than
eight or nine minutes, when she was discovered lifeless, and clutching a
small parcel of Indian meal tied up in a piece of cloth. In parts of
Ulster, the applications for employment on the Government works were
very numerous; in one parish alone (Ballynascreen) there were sixteen
hundred such applications. In West Innishowen, within twelve miles of
Londonderry, twelve persons died of starvation in one week.

Thus had the great Famine seized upon the four Provinces before the end
of 1846; Munster and Connaught, however, enduring sufferings which, in
their amount and terrible effects, were unknown to Leinster or Ulster.
In the West, Mayo, up to this time, had suffered most, which, from its
previously known state of destitution, was to be expected; in the South,
Cork seems to have been the county most extensively and most fatally
smitten. This, however, may not have been actually the case. Clare and
Kerry suffered greatly from the very beginning, but their sufferings
were not brought so prominently before the public as those of Cork.
This county had many and faithful chroniclers of her wants and
afflictions--a fact especially true of Skibbereen. That devoted town and
its neighbourhood wer