A Beautiful Day, Warm And Pleasant, Shone Upon Us; The Round- Headed Sycamores Are Leafed Out, And The Larch Has Shaken Out Her Tassels, The Ditch Backs Are Blazing With Primroses And The Black Thorns Are White With Bloom, And There Are Millions Of Daisies In The Grass.

We passed over some good land at the roadside, some green fields in the valleys, but there is a very great deal of waste and also of barren land.

A great deal of the tilled land is bog, a good deal of the waste land is shallow earth overlying rocks, some is cumbered with great boulders, and rough with heather and whins.

My companion, a lady active in the Ladies' Land League, thought it good land and worth reclaiming if let at a low rent. I, looking at it with Canadian eyes, would not have taken a gift of it and be bound to reclaim it. If I rented a few acres of those wild hills, and rooted out the whins and raised and removed the stones, I would think it unjust to raise the rent on me because of my labor.

It is admitted by all who know anything of the matter, that the tenants have reclaimed what land is reclaimed. Rent in County Leitrim has been raised from L24,990 to L170,670 within the last eighty years, and is L34,144 above the Government valuation.

We called at the house of a tenant farmer who had been evicted for non- payment of rent, and was back as a weekly tenant. He was putting in some crop, working alone in the field. He came to speak to my companion. He had got no word from the landlord as to whether he would put in any crop or not. He was in sore anxiety between his fear of offending the landlord, and the fear of doing anything against the rules of the Land League. His little boys were putting out manure in creels, carrying it on their shoulders. He had no means of paying rent. If he were forgiven the rent due and a year's rent to come, he might then be in a position to resume paying rent. This is my own opinion. The poor man himself was sorely perplexed and cast down. A thin, white, helpless-looking man. The terrors of the eviction had taken hold of his wife, who was sickly. The only hope they had was that God would bless the potato crop, for they had secured Champion potatoes for seed.

The potatoes that used to flourish in Ireland forty years ago, have entirely passed away. Even the Champion potato is not very good. The skin is thick and has a diseased appearance and the potato has black spots on the outside. I think the land is suffering from an overdose of such manure as they apply here, and the leaf mould is entirely exhausted. Of course this is the opinion of one who knows nothing of farming.

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