Forster had an interview with the resident magistrate, as well as with
the rector of the parish and some other gentlemen, who gave distressing
accounts of the poverty existing around them. Their attention was
directed to the necessity for the immediate establishment of
soup-kitchens, the employment of women in knitting, and the formation of
local committees for their relief, extending over several parishes. We
visited the poorhouse at Glenties, which is in a dreadful state; the
people were in fact half starved and only half clothed. The day before,
they had but one meal of oatmeal and water; and at the time of our visit
had not sufficient food in the house for the day's supply. The people
complained bitterly, as well they might, and begged us to give them
tickets for work, to enable them to leave the place and work on the
roads. Some were leaving the house, preferring to die in their own
hovels rather than in the Poorhouse. Their bedding consisted of dirty
straw, in which they were laid in rows on the floor; even as many as six
persons being crowded under one rug; and we did not see a blanket at
all. The rooms were hardly bearable for filth. The living and the dying
were stretched side by side beneath the same miserable covering! No
wonder that disease and pestilence were filling the infirmary, and that
the pale haggard countenances of the poor boys and girls told of
sufferings which it was impossible to contemplate without the deepest
commiseration and pity."

The carelessness and neglect of their duty by Irish landlords have so
often come before us during the progress of the Famine, that it is a
pleasure to meet with something worth quoting on the other side.
"Throughout Donegal we found," says Mr. Tuke, "the resident proprietors
doing much for their suffering tenantry; in many cases, all that
landlords could do for their relief and assistance. Several of them had
obtained loans under the late Drainage Act, and with this or private
resources are employing large numbers of labourers for the improvement
of their estates. We met with several who had one hundred men employed
in this manner. Many of these landlords, as well as the clergy, are most
assiduously working in all ways in their power. They have imported large
quantities of meal and rice, which they sell at prime cost, there being
in many districts no dealers to supply those articles; and are making
soup at their own houses, and dispensing daily to their famishing