morning was delightfully fresh and we walked briskly. We found the island larger than we supposed, and having a good deal of land fit for cultivation. Pausing at a field where a man was harrowing, the father had a conversation with him in French. He told him the island was about three miles long by one in width, and that Doctor Douglas farmed a considerable part of it, keeping a number of cows. Standing on its north bank a wide expanse of the St Lawrence lay at our feet, the blue waters ruffled by a western breeze. Beyond rose a chain of wooded hills, which swelled into a lofty peak, overhanging the river. “That is called cape Tourmente,” said Father Malloy. “Is it not a glorious scene! Who, looking upon it, would dream there is concentrated within ten minutes’ walk the misery of a nation? Gerald, we must give Ireland’s woe on this island a voice that will bring the help of Christian people.” “I am afraid it will be hard to interest them. Everything is against the poor emigrant, father. He is not looked upon as a human being. The very sailors treat him as they would a steer given to carry from one port to another.” “True, my boy, and you don’t know it all, for you have not lived in this country yet. I’ve seen in New York men and women shrink from the newly landed emigrant as an unclean thing, and at Quebec over there the very bar-room loafers sniff their noses in disgust at him. Unless they have money nobody makes them welcome; and if they have money everybody tries to get it from them. I buried a woman who had been left to die on the wharf at Quebec. The captain bundled her out, nobody would touch her, let alone give her shelter, and the poor sick crathur afore sundown found rest and is now where those who despised her will have little chance of going.” I asked Father Malloy about his visit to the ship the day before. He told me the man who shouted for him had a brother dying, who wanted the church’s last rites. “It was my first visit to a fever-stricken ship,” he went on to say, “and it was a revelation. I could not stand upright in her hold, for it was not much over 5 feet high, and there was little more elbow than head room. Every side was lined with berths and I saw dead lying in them with the living. The stench made one gasp, and the sight of the vermin crawling over dead and living made my flesh creep. An Irish priest is used to the sights of disease and want, but the emigrant-ship, fever-stricken, embodies every form of wretchedness and multiplies them a ten-fold.”