Morning journal and courier., 1889-03-23

produce one ton of kelp. In former times
 fifty dollars per ton was paid for this. To-
 day they do not receive the average price of
 ten dollars. There is but one buyer here. He pays what he pleases, often securing their store, in their bitter extremities, at ten snil- lings per ton. There is no recourse. The starving slaves are helpless.
 So too it is 8 revolting satire to call the proddings at the island rocks agriculture. There is not enough original soil on the en- tire three islands to make an average Ameri- can farm. To be sure on the bleak crags ! within the little paddocks are what they call ''felds' and s'farms;" quarter, a half, and even three-fourths of an acre, where the
 rocks are covered. For ten centuries the is- flanders have dug up the mud in pockety hol- lows of the shore, and have gathered all | manner of slime, ooze, pufin guano and sea- weeds, and carried them on their backs and hands in osier creels, sometimes miles to their tiny holdings. thickening and mulch ing this made" soil until ten inches of 1t may be found between the lodges and the sky. In this potatoes are planted. If the season is wet a few scrawny poreens are ri- pend If dry not so much as seed is gath cred; for the sun burns the soil to fiery clay to the limestone beneath. Then not indi- vidual but universal famine follows.
 There are altogether thirteen struggling villages on the islands. Perhaps four hun- dred people exist in the largest, the port hamlet of Killarney, on the north shore of Arranmore. This is long, struggling, hovel- bordered street, with low stone cabins with rotten matches, and not 6 half dozen habitable for civilized people. One is the inn, dreary cottage, cleaner but not larger than we'll made pig-sty; miserable gene. or two priests dwellings, the latter bare and stricken with the unreliable poverty of the islands; for this is the one place on earth where no comfort can be found possessed by individual or class. Every other hamlet is
 immeasurably worse. Some cluster like
 skeleton houses upon the crags. Others
 cling to rock lodges like dry and rotting fun-
 gi. Others shrink at the bases of duns and
 raths. Still others are built of, within and
 around ruins of the surpassing ecclesiastical
 antiquities of these once 'iIslaEds of the
 Blest," revolting burrows of human beings
 crouching within the shadows of ancient
 glories; not a home among them all as shell
 tering as the rude beehive cells, still tracea-
 ble here, in which huddled the skin clad
 hermits of two thousand years ago.
 The dress of the entire inhabitants is
 rags. These gre varied by occasional pecu-
 liarities. For instance, the women are uni
 versally bare-headed, with shocky heads of
 hair, frequently as coarse and matted ss a
 wild horses tail. The men, where they pos-
 sess any head covering at all, invariably wear tiny hat or cap that does not cover a fourth of their strangely large and sunken- sided skulls. Where they lack the real hat or cap, bit of untanned leather, or a scrap of flannel rag, takes it's place. No amount of questioning could secure a reason for this. It is their way. The rags residue of their clothing show that the Connamara flannel formed the original supply; and in rare in stances an entire sack-Iike bloase, covering body and legs among the men, and red petticoat and faded black braideen among the women, will be seen. But winter and | IaG upon the islands with their legs and feet covered. His the same with the children and more than half the men. Yesterday, up on the cliff near the lighthouse at Gag hill. fingered among bevy of women who were grooming and chatting in the warmth of the sunshine at the base of ledge of rocks Suddenly I turned to one, a woman of fifty, and sad; q will give you whole shilling if you will let me see your foot. ' She dropped upon the stone like sack of lead, pushed her foot up on my knee and reached skinny claw for the money; all in an instant. I wanted to see the foot of 8 human being that had lived fifty years like a beast among these barren rocks. Its sole was hard and cracked hoof. Its edges were sharp horn. But shoes and boots
 are unknown. The few men and women
 whose feet are covered at all wear a strange
 article called ttpampootas." These consist
 of pieces of oblong raw hide tied over the | rect Wllu IuOuSS. 4uS AalC IS uoAG Iuo LOOG, and the sole and sides are only covered.
 When the full consciousness of the cir
 cumstances in which these people exist
 dawns on one there is natural desire to
 study the results on lines of home and ethi-
 cal life Neither exist. Centuries of brsed-
 ing and in-breeding through a poverty so
 extreme and savage that the limit of human
 endurance is an endless, not an exceptional,
 experience, leave ethuological conditions as
 astounding, as pitiabla and sickening for
 contem plation. To the ordinary mind it is
 an almost incredible fact that any communi
 ty of three thousand people, in any Chris
 tian land, many souls are literally fading
 out in starvation at any tlms when any one
 may stop to think, or come here and look
 with one's own eyes, upon the torture of
 death in this terrible form. Perhaps in win
 ter there is more of this awful struggle be-
 tween life and utter want than in summer.
 But it is forever here. I have visited more
 than three hundred novels on the islands
 A picture of one is picture of them ala
 low stone shed of one little room, with &
 rotting matched roof above damp cold
 earthen or stone floor; black, tumb ble down,
 tireless chimney; a pot or kettle or two; two
 or three wooden dishes; stove, bench or
 stone seat; hunks of stone or sticks, or upon
 the earth itself, with sacks of potatoes stalks
 for bedding; and miserable, miserable men,
 women and children crowding and huddling
 
 little comfort of each others bloodless bodi-
 ly warmth. They cannot all be this way,
 you insist. No, not quite all. But the diff
 ference between the hundred or so who are
 able this seaeon to just live, who next season
 may be on the other side of the dark line of
 hunger and torture, and those who are now
 fighting the grim battle, is vague and little
 indeed. Here is an old man with 8 tottering old crone ill fireless, foodless cabin. He is not dying from old age, but from cold and hunger. It is too late to feed and warm him
 now. Here young man is dying. Three years in the cold waters gathering sesweed
 from the rocks have put his life-fres out.
 Here are children dying; fading, wasting away. They have never even at their moth- ers' breasts known enough food. Here is 8 mother dying, with four skinny children waiIing in the rags beside her. Where are the older. stronger ones, the husband and youths? Some have gone to America; some to God. You put fire and food within the place, but the skeleton among the rags is too far within the shadows to know it. You can only hear with each feeble breath: "Crosh orrin-My pastchee boght-my past
 chee boght!" (May the cross encompass me-! My poor childrenl-my poor childrenD There is a superstition here that the bodies
 of all those buried in the Arran Islands nev-
 CT decay. No wonder. There is no sub-
 stance left. Is there help for this misery
 and wretchedness? Not here, by any one
 here. For forty years there has not occurred
 even petty crime among these dumb, pa-
 tiant sufferers. Therefore they scarcely need
 law nor missionaries. They are only worse
 off in degree than the rest of the Irish peas
 antry. With them they need no help save
 the freedom of their country, and. under
 that and consequent reawakened activities
 and prosperity, the God given right of all
 peoples to life, liberty and the pursuit of
 happiness. EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.