Mobile long before. Mass was said on James River in 1526. The first Mass at St. Augustine was not celebrated on the site of the Cathedral. The real spot is laid down on Spanish maps. It was at the spot where the first chapel of Neustra Senora de la Leche was erected. The first Mass at St. Augustine was not offered by monks, but by a secular priest, Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, and the day was not the Feast of St. Augustine but the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. It is to be hoped that our Catholic papers will not herald these blunders.

J. G. SHEA.

An Ambassador from Ireland.

AN INTERESTING SKETCH OF THE TRIUMPHAL TOUR OF WILLIAM O'BRIEN, EDITOR AND PATRIOT.

THE caption to this article, "An Ambassador from Ireland," has been very appropriately applied to the scholarly editor of that great newspaper, United Ireland. His remarkable tour through Canada, which has just been brought to a close, promises to become historic, while the enthusiastic welcome tendered him on this side the line will not soon be forgotten. An able and cultured gentleman is William O'Brien, and entirely worthy of the momentous issues he came to remedy.

Says an exchange: "The visit of O'Brien to Canada at the present time, in order to show up the barbarous and iniquitous actions of Lansdowne, shows the pluck of this Irish. journalist. O'Brien's fame is now world-wide, yet time was, not a decade since, when, beyond the confines of journalistic Ireland and its ardently national pulse, William O'Brien was not even heard of. His has been a unique and gallant career, yet not unlike many of his far-famed predecessors, and it may well be said, co-laborers, in the Irish cause.

PICT ASS PRES
WM. O'BRIEN.

Were

it not a fettered Irish nation, perhaps the man now so well known may still have enjoyed the privacy which was his and theirs previous to the persecutions of a tyrannous government code, which served to draw them out."

O'Brien was born in Mallow, county Cork, October 2, 1852. He

comes of a family, locally prominent in Irish revolutionary movements, his father having taken part in the exciting events of '48, and his elder brother being equally prominent in the Fenian uprising of 1867. William O'Brien was educated at Cloyne College, and following his natural bent towards journalism he joined the staff of the Dublin Freeman's Fournal in 1876. In 1879 he visited the west of Ireland as the special commissioner of that paper to investigate the famine then raging there, and by his graphic descriptions of the destitution which he found, he contributed much to the relief of his unfortunate people. United Ireland was established in June, 1881, with Mr. O'Brien at its head, as the organ of the national leaders. Chief Secretary Forster ordered its suppression and imprisoned Editor O'Brien and fourteen members of the staff of the paper in Kilmainham Jail as suspects. After his release O'Brien renewed the war against the administration. He was subsequently elected to parliament from Mallow, and his course in the House of Commons was distinguished by zeal and ability. He is of medium height, thin and studious looking. In disposition he is modest and retiring, although regarded by Parnell as the most scholarly man and one of the ablest debaters of the Irish party.

His Departure for Canada.

The subject of this sketch embarked at Queenstown, May 1, for New York, and arrived on the 10th. He was accompanied by a tenant farmer named Kilbride. The manner of his departure from the Umbria in New York Bay was a notable one, and indicative of the warm welcome in store for him on Columbia's shores. Regarding his treatment on the steamship more or less might be said. Each party blames the other. It may be safely assumed that there was considerable feeling on both sides. However, he was safely conveyed to the city under the care of loving friends who gave him a cordial hundred thousand welcomes. Upon O'Brien's arrival here a cablegram came from Dublin. and was most striking. Here is an extract:·

"He will [O'Brien] meet bullies with facts. He will disarm ruffians by a gentleness of personal demeanor which will fascinate fury itself. For Canada is strewn with the bones of the victims of the Lansdownes, and he will only summon the thousands who lie in its cemeteries to evoke processions of phantoms whose bony hands will clap his coming. The ghastly story of the thousands upon thousands who died in the south of Ireland under the present lord's father will be brought back to the Irish in Canada by the survivors of three thousand more whom he exiled, stricken with fever and perishing of hunger. Canadian hospitals were filled with them on their arrival, and $500,000 was raised by subscription to meet the wants of those who had not supplied the sharks with food on the way over. What the father did in the former famine days, the son has been doing again up to the full measure of his ability. Kerry is the worst spot in the south of Ireland, and its character is due to the Lansdownes. The present marquis gave kindly promise in his youth, but when he succeeded his father, some twenty years ago, the expectations of the people

Were Rudely Dispelled.

The condition of the tenantry need not be sought in other pages than those written by the agent, Trench, in his candid volume, Realities of Irish Life.' Misery reaches its lowest level in the hovels of Lansdowne tenants, whose lives have been blasted by hereditary rack-renting.

"Where the old earl was brutal, the younger one is tricky and treacherous

Greedy for the uttermost penny, his 135,000 acres formerly yielded more than £50,000 a year. The fall of agricultural prices has lowered his income, but never have his rents been lowered except under some sort of compulsion. When he was over here last year he made rosy promises only to approve the breaking of them by his agents. Portions of the estate are wild mountain or stony waste, which only superhuman industry can reduce to cultivation. As rapidly as toil conquered the resistance of nature, rents went up; and as soon as the tenant had made a holding give a return for his energy, he was told to get out of it if he could not pay as high a sum as any other bidder.

66

Inducing Archbishop Lynch to oppose his visit was characteristic of Lansdowne's duplicity. He cares as much for the aged prelate as he does for the old women and shivering infants his bailiffs are throwing out of houses built by their kindred and equitably their property. O'Brien is not the man to be daunted by threats. He goes to Canada at the urgent request of many of the most prudent and best informed Canadian Home Rulers, some of them leading Protestants. collisions foretold by some of the rack-renter's flunkeys will prove idle stories."

Address at Montreal.

The

While, unfortunately, they did not prove idle stories as Toronto, Kingston, and Hamilton abundantly testify, still it is certainly fortunate that Mr. O'Brien escaped without serious injury. Said he in his first address at Montreal: “At the outset he said he wished to tell them why he had come to address the people of Canada on the subject of Irish evictions. It was because the humble homes of the poor tenantry of Luggacurran were at that moment desolate, and the man who is responsible for these desolate homes, these evicted and cruelly suffering people to-day, holds the highest position in Canada. He was sorry to have to come to this land with the cruel story of the wrongs and sufferings of the afflicted tenantry of Luggacurran. He was sorry to harrow the feelings of the citizens of Montreal with the story of their misery. The speaker was but an humble citizen. Lord Lansdowne was a rich and powerful lord. But still he would tell his story, and the Canadian people could decide between them, and by their condemnation compel justice to be shown to his suffering countrymen. The speaker had not come to Canada to appeal to the passions of the people. He had come to appeal to the reason and humanity of the free and liberty-loving people of Canada. It was the Canadian parliament who, in 1879, that ever-memorable year of death-dealing famine, voted £20,000 to buy bread for the women and children who were starving in the midst of that beautiful and fertile land.

"This must never happen again. Charles Stewart Parnell has said that never again would he go begging alms for the victims of landlordism. This time they did not ask for £20,000, but what is asked is that you may know the use Lord Lansdowne makes of the £20,000 he receives from the people of Canada, and if it is found that he has been making bad use of it, to ask the people of Canada to pass their judgment in condemnation of his acts. The Canadian parliament were not satisfied with believing the starving people. They did more; they struck at the root of the evil when they passed the resolution in favor of Irish Home Rule, which, if obtained, would be the death blow of the tyrannies of landlordism. Even recently the parliament of Canada has done more; it has endeavored to stand between the Irish people and the coercion, as they did between them and starvation long ago. Personally

Mr. O'Brien had no ill-feeling against Lord Lansdowne, but still the Irish people could not be content to lay down like whipped hounds at his feet without telling to the world the story of their wrongs.

"It was not the intention of the speaker to make any personal attack on Lord Lansdowne. He would not call up the ghastly memories that have haunted for long years the fair valley of Luggacurran. Sir Charles Russell had done that, but he would confine himself to the facts of the present day and tell how Lord Lansdowne was laying waste to that fine estate and carrying out the work of depopulation, as if the angel of death had knocked at the door of each humble cabin, and still the processes were not half served. But if Lord Lansdowne or his agents, which was the same thing, were let alone, there was not a man, woman or child on the estate of Luggacurran but would be banished from the houses of their fathers, and either compelled to starve on the roadside or seek homes beyond the sea."

Trouble at Toronto.

On May 18, Messrs. O'Brien and Kilbride visited Toronto, where trouble was feared. It came. On the streets they were hooted at several times by roughs, but no serious demonstration took place till evening. At 3.30 o'clock President J. A. Mulligan, of the local branch of the National League, came into the hotel and asked the party to take a walk. Some one suggested that it would hardly be safe, as a crowd of roughs were in the street, but Mr. O'Brien persisted in going. The party got out of the hotel with difficulty, and when once in the street were surrounded by a howling mob, who yelled, “Traitor," "Down with the dynamiter," and "God save the Queen." O'Brien was jostled, and several blows were aimed at him. Finally, the little group was driven to bay against a wall. "You cowardly dogs!" shouted O'Brien, “don't you see that we are unarmed?" Groans and hisses were the reply. Two policemen standing near made no effort to disperse the crowd. Mr. O'Brien and his half-dozen friends pushed on into Bay Street, and there the stones began to fly. Mr. O'Brien and Secretary Cahill, of the local National League, lost their hats, while J. P. Wall, a New York Tribune correspondent, was knocked senseless by a brickbat. Wall was carried into a drug store, a policeman refusing to help. Mr. O'Brien attempted to take refuge in Sharp's laundry, and failing in that rushed into the bicycle store of Thomas Lalor, Jr., adjoining. A volley of stones shattered the windows, and the mob burst into the store, yelling like demons and showering missiles in the direction which Mr. O'Brien had taken toward the end of the store. Some ladies and old women screamed and fainted, while the mob tumbled pell-mell, helter-skelter, over bicycles and other machinery, smashing them one against the other in their savage fury, amid cries of "Kill the traitor," "Hang him," "Lansdowne forever." O'Brien, however, was safely led away by C. Cashman, an official of the crown land department, and reached the hotel safely. D. P. Cahill was knocked down and received two dangerous cuts from broken bottles, and more than a score of other persons were more or less seriously injured. Mr. Lalor's store was completely wrecked, and several hundred dollars' worth of his property destroyed.

Two more policemen appeared, making four in all, in the presence of a crowd of fully one thousand rioters, who had possession of the streets for at least half an hour, throwing bricks and cobble-stones at the group of unarmed men. Police Sergeant Adair got a cut in the head, and when his three comrades saw this, they moved away to a respectful distance, and let the mob do as it pleased. Up to midnight, the neighborhood of the Rossin House was filled with the mob, who groaned and yelled to their hearts' content.

Demonstration at Ottawa.

O'Brien and Kilbride left next morning for Ottawa, the people of which took time by the forelock. A train carrying a deputation composed of the most prominent members of the citizens' committee and of the National League went out to Moberly, a distance of one hundred and seventy-five miles, and welcomed Mr. O'Brien and party. It was a regular procession as the party moved up through the city in a long line of sixty carriages, in which were seated prominent French-Canadians and Protestant citizens, as well as nearly all of the representative Irishmen in the city. When O'Brien entered the rotunda of the hotel an attempt was made by some persons in the surging throng to cheer the Queen; but the storm of cheers for O'Brien and groans for Lansdowne rose above everything else. At the Royal Roller Rink on Slater Street, where O'Brien was to speak, five thousand persons were packed. Large pictures of Gladstone and Parnell were placed in front of the platform, with an Irish, an American, and a Canadian flag, and the motto in large green letters, "God Save Ireland." In one corner of the hall was massed a solid body of young students from Ottawa College, three hundred in number, and mostly Americans, who shouted in chorus, "O'-B-r-i-e-n," amid thunders of applause from all parts of the house.

When O'Brien stepped upon the platform the throng rose and cheered him enthusiastically. Professer H. J. Frawley, of Ottawa College, read an address of welcome. Then two telegrams, one from Archbishop O'Brien of Halifax, N. S., and the other from Chicago Knights of Labor, both expressing sympathy for Editor O'Brien, were read, and the audience went wild again. “Bravo, Chicago!" "Three cheers for Archbishop O'Brien!" "Three cheers for the stars and stripes!" and similar expressions followed, and again and again a scene of excitement and enthusiasm occurred impossible to describe. "I am proud to learn that I am, I believe, the first representative of the Irish people who has ever set foot in this capital of the Canadian Dominion; and standing here, at the seat and centre of Canadian independence, I cannot help thinking that if, like you, we had a parliament of our own on College Green, it would not be necessary for us to travel across the world to worry you with the sorrows and sufferings of our poor people and to subject you to so crucial a test of the sincerity of your sympathy with Ireland. (Applause.) Our visit here is a matter of life and death for the five hundred unhappy beings whom your Governor-General has doomed to eviction and destruction. (Groans.) Let there be no mistake as to the state of the controversy between Lord Lansdowne and ourselves. We have made specific and terrible charges, and given day