Most of these islands, notably Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland.

Is it not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic penury and intermittent famine?
On one of these islands, known as Scull Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the island.

There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, and of pestilences, to account for these.

But it is likely enough that the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at some early date.

Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away some of these relics.