wishing their want to be known. Helped in this careful way the amount
given, exclusive of expenses, in North Donegal was L33,660.17.1, of
which amount the New York _Herald_ gave L2,000, besides L203 to an
emigration fund enabling 115 persons to leave the country. Surely we
must think that before these people applied for public charity--and
every case was examined into by some of the Committee or their agents--
they had exhausted all their means, and sold all they had to sell. How,
then, could they possibly be able to pay back rent in March, 1881?

In the middle of my letter I got the long-waited-for opportunity to
leave Ramelton behind and go up into the Donegal Hills.

The environs of Ramelton are wonderfully beautiful, sudden hills, green
vales, lovely nooks in unexpected places, waters that sparkle and dash,
or that flow softly like the waters of Shiloh, great aristocratic trees
in clumps, standing singly, grouped by the water's edge, as if they had
sauntered down to look about them, or drawn up on the hill-side many
deep, stretching far away like the ranks of a grand army. All that these
can do to make Ramelton a place of beauty has been done. It is hemmed in
by hills that lie up against the sky, marked off into fields by whin
hedges, till they look like sloping chequer-boards. Beyond them, in
places, tower up the mountain-tops of dark Donegal, crusted over with
black heather, seamed by rift and ravine, bare in places where these
rocks, those bones of the mountains, have pushed themselves through the
heather, till it looks like a ragged cloak. The sun shines, the rooks
flap busily about, as noisy as a parliament, the air is keen, and so we
drive out of Ramelton.

The sky was blue, although the wind was cold, and it was blowing quite a
gale. We had not left the town far behind when the storm recommenced in