r and read, because what I
actually see surpasses what I ever read of past and present
calamities.[229]

The weather in March became mild, and even warm and sunny; some little
comfort, one would suppose, to those without food or fuel. But no; they
were so starved and weakened and broken down, that it had an injurious
effect upon them, and hurried them rapidly to their end. A week after
the passage quoted above was written, Count Strezelecki again writes,
and says he is sorry to report that the distress had increased; a thing
which could be hardly believed as possible. Melancholy cases of death on
the public roads and in the streets had become more frequent. The sudden
warmth of the weather, and the rays of a bright sun, accelerate
prodigiously the forthcoming end of those whose constitutions are
undermined by famine or sickness. "Yesterday," he writes, "a
countrywoman, between this and the harbour (one mile distance), walking
with four children, squatted against a wall, on which the heat and light
reflected powerfully; some hours after two of her children were corpses,
and she and the two remaining ones taken lifeless to the barracks.
To-day, in Westport, similar melancholy occurrences took place."[230]

Some years ago, during a visit to Westport, I received sad corroboration
of the truth of these statements. I met several persons who had
witnessed the Famine in that town and its neighbourhood, and their
relation of the scenes which fell under their notice not only sustained,
but surpassed, if possible, the facts given in the above communications.
A priest who was stationed at Westport during the Famine, was still
there at the period of my visit. During that dreadful time, the people,
he told me, who wandered about the country in search of food, frequently
took possession of empty houses, which they easily found; the inmates
having died, or having gone to the Workhouse, where such existed. A
brother and sister, not quite grown up, took possession of a house in
this way, in the Parish of Westport. One of them became ill; the other
continued to go for the relief where it was given out, but this one soon
fell ill also. No person heeded them. Everyone had too much to do for
himself. They died. Their dead bodies were only discovered by the
offensive odour which issued from the house in which they died, and in
which they had become putrefied. It was found necessary to make an
aperture for ventilation on the roof before anyon