The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-21 00:00:00

of the better sort in the neighbourhood in search of
Three or four miles from Templemore is a
mountain called the Devil's Bit. It is a prominent

arms.

object from the railway, and the legend which gives
it this peculiar name relates to the arch fiend, who
in his travels being so hungry as to be in no way

particular, bit off a huge morsel of the mountain,
but not relishing the flavour, or finding the morsel
somewhat tough, spat it out again some miles to the

east, where it forms the Rock of Cashel. Incredulous

persons may doubt the legend if they will, but there
is the huge gap in the mountain full in view, and
exactly corresponding with a giant's bite, and there

is the rock of Cashel to refute them. The Devil's
Bit Mountain was the appointed rendezvous of the
insurgents in this district on the night of Shrove

Tuesday. Information was received in Templemore
of an intended attack on Mr. Trant's house, and a

party of police and soldiers were marching on Wed-
_ _ _

nesday to defend it, when they saw a body of about
200 Fenians at some few hundred yards distance,
armed, seven or eight with guns and the rest with

pikes. The c)ustabulary who were in the van fired
upon the party, one of whom was seen to fall. The
rest hesitated for a moment, but seeing the gleam-
ing bayonets of the soldiers behind they broke and
ran. This is supposed to have been the party which
burnt Roskeer barrack, and shot a man named

Tracy because he refused to join them. The con-
stabulary and soldiers did not follow in pursuit,
being hurried on to the relief of Tovi-house, the
inmates of which, however, suffered no molestation.
From one house near Templemore the insurgents

got five pounds' worth of bread for their commis-
sariat, at another one of their leaders bought two
gallons of whisky, and revived their drooping
courage with a drain all round. When the moun-
tain was afterwards searched the police found a
horse and car, supposed to belong to the Gleesons,
which had been used. to convey the commissariat

and the pike::. The Fenian orders, communicated to

the assembled bolt in the Bit, were vacillating, and
did not re -assure rum who were cheered by no single
feat of arms in any part of the country. So they
scattered in a vcry s!iort time, returning each man

to his own home. The people who had cullected
the arms declared that they wanted them only
for a fortnight. But the Templemore campaign

lasted not two days, much less two weeks. In one
or two cases, I believe; the arms taken have been
returned ; generally, of course, the borrowers have
not thought themselves bound by the self-imposed
limit of time. Before and at the time of the outbreak
the usual run upon the bank took place here; and one
of the small farmers lost every penny of the money
which he then withdrew. After receiving some £.60 at
the bank counter he turned homewards, but hearing
that the Fenians were coming he hid his gold care-
fully under a large stone in some hedge bottom.
Perhaps some person saw the irregular deposit, and
when the coast was clear afterwards walked off with
the money ; perhaps the farmer, in his excitement,
forgot the landmark, and was unable to find the
stone which covered his wealth,—anyhow he is in-
c)nsolable, for the money is not.

The same spirit which leads to agrarian crime in
this country—the determination to take vengeance,
each man for his own supposed wrong—induced last
week an atrocious attempt to murder a supposed in-
former near this place. A man named Carroll had
been arrested with some other Fenians, but as there
was little or no evidence against him he was dismissed,
the other men being retained in custody. The local
Fenians appear to have come to the conclusion that
Carroll had given information to the authorities, and
that he was liberated on this account. Some of them,
therefore, waylaid him on his return home and
hacked his body in the most savage manner. He was
beaten about the head, there was a great gash in his
throat, and there werestabsin his stomach as though
from a bowie knife. The poor man was found some
time after watds on the road near Borrisoleigh. The
wonder is that he did not bleed to death ; probably
the extreme cold prevented this. To-day he still
survives, but lies in a most precarious condition in
the hozpital at Thurles. Carroll is a fine, robust
young fellow ; a man of less vitality could not have
lived so long after receiving injuries so terrible. His
woul 1-be murderers probably know by this time that
they attacked the wrong man. The police really
had information which led to the arrests, but Carroll
was not the informer.

A milesman, employed on the Great Southern
and Western line near Kihnallock, states that on
Saturday evening a party of Fenians came to him
while eng;tged upon the railway, and made him
swear to deliver up his tools at a given hour on the
clay following. As these tools enable anybody pos-
sessing them to wrench up the rails with ease, the
information thus supplied was significant, and a
party of constabulary and soldiers was sent at the
proper time to the point indicated by the milesman,
but nobody appeared. The man says that he can
identify one of the persons who compelled him to
take the oath. Before and during this abortive
rising the Fenians seem to have persuaded or com-
pelled a large number of people to take oaths of one
sort or other ; but too much protesting, on oath or
otherwise, is a sign of weakness in any cause. I
have already mentioned the precaution taken upon
the Great Southern and Western line in sending a
pilot engine in advance of the night mail ; and if
the milesman's story be true, this precaution is not
unnecessary. Of course the removal of rails now
can only be suggested by a spirit of mischief and a
wicked disregard of life ; the time has gone by for
excusing such an act, from the insurgent point of
view, as a piece of necessary strategy. But the
apprehension of danger to this train has seriously
affected the traffic by it, and night after night brings
to Limerick Junction an array of empty carriages.
For some days past, from all the railway stations
in this and the neighbouring counties, young men
have left in considerable numbers for Cork, en route
to America. Those best able to form an opinion have
no doabt that these persons have been more or less
concerned in the late outbreak. Feeling that the
game is up, they are getting out of harm's way, or
are leaving in disgust a country which remains in-
sensible to the blessings of Republicanism. On the
principle that you should build a bridge for a flying
foe, the constabulary, who watch narrowly at each
station all arrivals and departures, offer no opposi-
tion to this Fenian exodus. One is only tempted
to say to each of these emigrants what the Arch-
bishop of Grenada said in Zliannaaing Gil 13laer—

" Go, young man ! I wish you all possible pros-
perity, with a little more sense !"

Liatzmcs JUNCTION, Wednesday Night.

Several of the country people in this county who
have been concerned in the late outbreak, and are
still absent from their houses, have expressed their
wish to return if the authorities will deal leniently
with them.

Reports are in circulation that Fenian reinforce-
ments are expected from America, and that the
landing has been prevented hitherto by the bad
weather.

We quote the following from a contem-
porary :—The weather continues excessively
severe, the quantity of snow on the
ground this morning having been considerable ;

and it is absolutely impossible that the insurgents,
ill-clothed, half-starved, and unsheltered as they
are, could have held together in any numbers, in
the mountains, at such a season; and it is suspected
that many of the wretched miscreants have already
fallen victims to the hardship of campaigning under
such circumstances. Even the military, with all
the care bestowed upon them, are suffering very
much from exposure to cold and wet in scouring
the country for Fenians, against whom the hard-
ship thus caused naturally exasperates them.
Numerous prisoners are daily arrested, and among
those taken up by the police yesterday was a man
named Duffy, who is known to have acted as
secretary to James Stephens, and who was found
with a large sum of money in his possession at
Boyle. Threatening notices have been posted up
in some localities in the county of Tipperary call-
ing on the tenantry not to pay rents, under a pen-

alty of being shot, by order of the authorities of the
" Irish Republic." Notwithstanding all these un-

favourable symptoms, however, the agricultural
classes show signs of returning confidence, and
in Tipperary and elsewhere deposits, which were
removed from the banks under the influence of

alarm, have in many cases been restored.—The
Very Rev. Dr. Howley, P.P. of Tipperary, ad-
dressed his people in a most impressive discourse
against Fenianism on Sunday last ; and the follow-
ing resolution, which was proposed yesterday at
a meeting in Arklow, by Archdeacon Redmond,
the zealous parish priest of that town, shows, in
concise terms, the view of this insane outbreak
which the Catholic clergy in general are endea-
vouring to impress upon the people :—" Resolved,

that the members of this committee wish to take
this opportunity to express their abhorrence of
the Fenian conspiracy as opposed to both Divine
and human law, as utterly senseless, mischievous,
and wicked, as calculated to drive away the wealthy
from our shores and to increase the evils of absen-

teeism, to paralyze trade, to prevent the influx of
capital, and to diminish employment ; to impede
beneficial legislation, to cloud and to blight the
best prospects of the country, and to bring dis-
grace on the character of Irishmen at home and
abroad, exhibiting them as lamentably credulous
and ready to leave themselves at the mercy of de-
signing knaves, seeking to traffic in their money
and their blood for their own selfish and wicked
purposes; and that therefore we pledge our-
selves to discountenance and to prevent to the
best of our power the diffusion of such a fool-
ish, mischievous, and wicked combination."—As-
suredly Ireland is at this moment in a most deplora-
ble state—a state from which more than human
means seem required to rescue her. The country
labours under the incubus of an insurrection, essen-
tially foreign in its origin and organization, and
which the people have not wished for, although
so many thousands of Irishmen have been unfor-
tunately duped into it. It is opposed to the reli-
gion of the country, and ruinous to its material
interests ; and nothing could be more unjust than
to hold the country at large responsible for the
mad and wicked outbreak ; but still it remains an
incubus which the suffering country cannot shake
off. I happen to be intimately acquainted with
the feelings and opinions of all classes of the
people in a portion of Ireland which has been the
scene of some of the saddest occurrences in this
I outbreak, and I know that even the peasantry look
with dread and horror upon Fenianism. Never•
theless they cannot raise their hands agains
I it.

Be they ever so well inclined, they dare
not do so. I speak of the mature portion
of the population, who have even the smallest
stake in the community, in the shape of family
or of holding ; but there are plenty of loose,
unattached, floating members—of social scum, if
the word be not too harsh to apply to anything
human—to form a nucleus of Fenianism in every
district quite capable of overawing the rest of the
population. And it appears that this overawing
system has been carried into effect with a ven-
geance. In all the disturbed localities bodies
of Fenians have gone to the farmers' houses to
compel the young men to join under threats of
immediate death ; in some cases they have actu-
ally shot persons for refusing to join them, in
order to strike terror into others, and they have
adopted the barbarous expedient of placing those
who were reluctant to accompany them in the
front rank whenever they attacked a police sta-
tion, .so that the poor victims might be most ex-
posed to death. In many instances young men
have fled from the rural districts into the towns
to escape the compulsory recruitment of the
Fenians, and this is known to have happened
especially in Tipperary. The people of Ireland
have no wish to appeal to civil war for the re-
dress of their grievances. By no means. The
Irish make some of the very best soldiers in the
world abroad, and they may, perhaps, be comba-
tive enough at home ; but it may be said, without
any slur on the national character, that they
have not, and never have had, military tastes sim-
ilar to those of many nations of Continental Eu-
rope. They don't like civil war except in theory.
Some people, unwilling to believe that the Fe-
nians are really so destitute of pluck as they seem
to be, suppose that their apparent cowardice is
only a portion of their guerilla tactics ; but I am
convinced that the retreating movement will
always continue to be the main feature of their
tactics, and that they have no notion whatever of
meeting either troops or constabulary in a stand-
up fight. In the meantime great mischief has
been done. Business has been completely para-
lyzed. Money is not circulating. The prices of
provisions have been considerably raised. The
weather itself has long been most.unpropitious, and
has quite interrupted agricultural work ; and, on
the whole, the position of the country is gloomy in
the extreme. On Sunday last, in all the chapels
of the south of Ireland, the clergy denounced Fe-
nianism in the strongest language, and warned
their people against it ; and, on the other hand,
Government seems to have adopted every practi-
cable measure to eradicate it. Flying columns of
troops have been formed to scour all the disturbed
districts, each column being formed of infantry
and cavalry, with engineers, military train, &c.,
but as yet they have not been successful in coming
to an encounter with any body of insurgents. A
vast number of prisoners have been arrested,
many of them in arms, and several of them sup-
posed to be leading men of the organization ; and
four Special Commissions are immediately to be
issued, to sit forthwith in Dublin, Cork, Limerick,
and Clonmel, for the trial of the Fenians who will
now be arraigned on a charge not of treason
felony, but of high treason ; and it is more than
probable that the law will be carried out with
the utmost rigour, at least in a sufficient number
of cases to spread a salutary terror in the ranks of
the insurgents.

MACKEREL.—During the past week, in England,
from 40,000 to 50,000 mackerel were caught by the
Cornish boats, a very large proportion of which
supply was sent to London. Prices varied from
325. to 38s. per six score.

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