the finest natural advantages in the world, and which could be rendered
capable of supporting in comfort at least three times its present
population, is now overspread with such extreme human misery that the
awful scenes portrayed in the following pages cease to excite a thrill
of horror.

JOSEPH STURGE.

_Birmingham,
3rd Month, 15th, 1847._

THREE DAYS AT SKIBBEREEN,

AND ITS VICINITY.

SKIBBEREEN, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20.--Rev. Mr. F---- called with several
gentlemen of the town, and in their company I took my first walk through
this Potter's Field of destitution and death. As soon as we opened the
door, a crowd of haggard creatures pressed upon us, and, with agonizing
prayers for bread, followed us to the soup-house. One poor woman, whose
entreaties became irresistibly importunate, had watched all night in the
grave-yard, lest the body of her husband should be stolen from his
resting place, to which he had been consigned yesterday. She had left
five children sick with the famine fever in her hovel, and she raised an
exceedingly bitter cry for help. A man with swollen feet pressed closely
upon us, and begged for bread most piteously. He had pawned his shoes
for food, which he had already consumed. The soup-house was surrounded
by a cloud of these famine spectres, half naked, and standing or sitting
in the mud, beneath a cold, drizzling rain. The narrow defile to the
dispensary bar was choked with young and old of both sexes, struggling
forward with their rusty tin and iron vessels for soup, some of them
upon all fours, like famished beasts. There was a cheap bread dispensary
opened in one end of the building, and the principal pressure was at the
door of this. Among the attenuated apparitions of humanity that thronged
this gate of stinted charity, one poor man presented himself under
circumstances that even distinguished his case from the rest. He lived
several miles from the centre of the town, in one of the rural
districts, where he found himself on the eve of perishing with his
family of seven small children. Life was worth the last struggle of
nature, and the miserable skeleton of a father had fastened his youngest
child to his back, and with four more by his side, had staggered up to
the door, just as we entered the bread department of the establishment.
The hair upon his face was nearly as long as that upon his head. His
cheeks were fall