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- hearts of the emigrants fell. Nearly all of them had now hied below, to
escape the uncomfortable and perilous decks: and from the two
_“booby-hatches”_ came the steady hum of a subterranean wailing and
weeping. That irresistible wrestler, sea-sickness, had overthrown the
stoutest of their number, and the women and children were embracing and
sobbing in all the agonies of the poor emigrant’s first storm at sea.
Bad enough is it at such times with ladies and gentlemen in the cabin,
who have nice little state-rooms; and plenty of privacy; and stewards
to run for them at a word, and put pillows under their heads, and
tenderly inquire how they are getting along, and mix them a posset: and
even then, in the abandonment of this soul and body subduing malady,
such ladies and gentlemen will often give up life itself as
unendurable, and put up the most pressing petitions for a speedy
annihilation; all of which, however, only arises from their intense
anxiety to preserve their valuable lives.
How, then, with the friendless emigrants, stowed away like bales of
cotton, and packed like slaves in a slave-ship; confined in a place
that, during storm time, must be closed against both light and air; who
can do no cooking, nor warm so much as a cup of water; for the
drenching seas would instantly flood their fire in their exposed galley
on deck? How, then, with these men, and women, and children, to whom a
first voyage, under the most advantageous circumstances, must come just
as hard as to the Honorable De Lancey Fitz Clarence, lady, daughter,
and seventeen servants.
Nor is this all: for in some of these ships, as in the case of the
Highlander, the emigrant passengers are cut off from the most
indispensable conveniences of a civilized dwelling. This forces them in
storm time to such extremities, that no wonder fevers and plagues are
the result. We had not been at sea one week, when to hold your head
down the fore hatchway was like holding it down a suddenly opened
cesspool.
But still more than this. Such is the aristocracy maintained on board
some of these ships, that the most arbitrary measures are enforced, to
prevent the emigrants from intruding upon the most holy precincts of
the quarter-deck, the only completely open space on ship-board.
Consequently—even in fine weather—when they come up from below, they
are crowded in the waist of the ship, and jammed among the boats,
casks, and spars; abused by the seamen, and sometimes cuffed by the
officers, for unavoidably standing in the way of working the vessel.
The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all;
and to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian
incursions of the _“wild Irish”_ emigrants, ropes were passed
athwart-ships, by the main-mast, from side to side: which defined the
boundary line between those who had paid three pounds passage-money,
from those who had paid twenty guineas. And the cabin-passengers
themselves were the most urgent in having this regulation maintained.
Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are
deposited at their banker’s, and whose bodies but serve to carry about
purses, knit of poor men’s heartstrings, if thus easily they could
precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of
humanity.
But, I, Redburn, am a poor fellow, who have hardly ever known what it
is to have five silver dollars in my pocket at one time; so, no doubt,
this circumstance has something to do with my slight and harmless
indignation at these things.
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