anaghy, but a "row"
breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over
the possession of Her Majesty's Post-office. It seems there is an
official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a
particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause
shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand
establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother
to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it
while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the
office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster himself![17] A
trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the
actual situation in this most curious country.

About seven o'clock Father Walker made his appearance--a fine-looking,
dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a
stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite
the "boycott," from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality
that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to
discredit the Methuen treaty.

Father Walker is the President of the National League branch.

Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this
part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential
grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and
other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common
practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and
bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone and other parts of the
North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and
pay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate I
had seen of the proportion of these "migratory labourers" to the whole
population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an
under-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part of
the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so
much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not
out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more
extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent,
of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of
migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be
recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Alb