rrived here
they found ready to their hand the _cadre_ at least of a formidable
organisation, and the reign of terrorism at once commenced.

Up to the present moment I have not heard of houses being blown up by
dynamite after the fashion in Bantry, but the farmers who have already
not paid their rents decline to do so, or pay in full secretly, while
openly subscribing to the Land League and denouncing the mean-spirited
serfs who would pay a farthing above Griffith's valuation.

There is no mistaking the strength of the movement which has at last
reached this remote island, between which and America, as a native
said to me yesterday, "There is not as much as the grass of a goat."
This saying refers to the popular method of measurement, which is not
by acres, but by the grass of so many cows, according to the richness
of the pasture. Up to a month ago there was no talk of the Land League
on Valentia Island. The tenants had for the most part paid their May
rents, and the situation therefore afforded little scope for
agitation; but the subtle spirit which spread instantaneously from
Tralee to Cahirciveen quickly traversed the ferry, and now the
Valentians are as keen on the subject of their grievances as anybody
else in the western half of Ireland. At Cahirciveen anti-landlordism
is as vigorous at this moment as at Tralee, or even at Ennis itself,
albeit violent personal outrages have not been perpetrated in the
immediate neighbourhood.

A resolute and influential leader of the people declared to me
yesterday that the spirit now aroused would never be quelled but by a
full and generous recognition of the claims of the cultivators. He
averred that the people are not only awakened to their wrongs and
determined to have them redressed, but that they possess the power of
enforcing their will. I hinted that savage threats and deeds of
violence might produce temporary anarchy, but that the end of all
would be the crushing of the League with a strong hand. The answer was
not argument, but defiance. It was impossible, the speaker asserted,
to crush the combination now existing in Kerry. It could not be
crushed, for the simple reason that it did not transgress the law.
This was startling news, and I at once asked what was to be said of
the dynamite affair at Bantry, the ear-cutting business near Castle
Island, and the shooting of a bailiff in Tyrone? Only one of those
things, I was instantly reminded, had occurred in Kerry, and I