NOTES. 303 



ping papers, for the ostensible purpose of paying their travelling 

 expenses to the port of embarkation, or their board a few 

 weeks or days before they are ready to sail, or for their partial 

 outfit; the real object is to tie the poor renegade as firmly as 

 possible to his new engagement. 



With two-thirds of the required number of men of the 

 above description, the ship sails, relying on making up her 

 complement in Portuguese sailors at the "Western Islands, or 

 in Kanakas from the Sandwich or other islands of the Pacific 

 Ocean. Both these classes are usually as unpromising speci- 

 mens of humanity as can well be conceived, having this dif- 

 ference, however, that the former are perfectly incorrigible, 

 while the latter do sometimes improve. 



This motley crew are at length mustered on board, drunk or 

 sober, though far less intemperance now prevails than in former 

 years, thanks to the praiseworthy endeavour of reformers in 

 one much-needed department of their endeavours. Sullen and 

 sad, or jovial and light-hearted as they may seem, they arc 

 now in their quarters for several years. What a home ! Look 

 around for its facilities for comfort and improvement. 



In that repulsive hole called the forecastle, of scarce twelve 

 feet square capacity, not high enough to allow a tall man to 

 stand upright, with little or no light or ventilation but what 

 comes down the narrow hatchway (and even this must be 

 closed in rough weather), here some twenty or five-and- twenty- 

 men are to eat, and sleep, and live, if such a state can be called 

 living ; here, in sickness and in health, by day and by night, 

 without fire in the rigours of the polar regions, or cooling ap- 

 pliances under the equator, theso men, with their chests and 

 hammocks, or bunks, arc to find stowage. After again and 

 again examining this feature of their arrangements, and com- 

 paring it with the cells prepared for and enjoyed by the felons 

 in all our principal prisons in more than half the states of our 

 Union which I have visited, the latter would be pronounced 

 princely, enviable even in all the requisites of roominess, light, 

 ventilation, and facility for seclusion ! 



