22 A^ AMERICAS FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



withdrawing her. Another ship was procured from Liver 

 pool, and the stores, passengers, doctor, and all, hastily trans 

 ferred to her in the night, as soon as she arrived. They got 

 to sea, and he found there was hardly a particle of any thing 

 in the medicine chest. He begged the captain to put back, 

 but the captain was a stubborn, reckless, devil-may-care fel 

 low, and only laughed at him. That very night the cholera 

 broke out. He went again to the captain, he beseeched him, 

 he threatened him ; he told him that on his head must be 

 the consequences ; the captain didn t care a rope yarn for the 

 consequences, he would do any thing else to oblige the doctor, 

 but go back he would not. The doctor turned the pigs out 

 of the long-boat, and made a temporary hospital of it. It 

 was a cold place, but any thing was better than that horrible 

 steerage. Nevertheless, down into the steerage the doctor 

 would himself go every morning, nor leave it till every soul 

 had gone or been carried on deck before him. He searched 

 the ship for something he could make medicine of. The car 

 penter s chalk was the only thing that turned up. This he 

 calcined and saved, to be used sparingly. He forced those 

 who were the least sea-sick to become nurses ; convalescents 

 and those with less dangerous illness, he placed beds for on 

 the galley and the hen-coops, and made the captain give up 

 his fowls and other delicacies to them. Fortunately fair 

 weather continued, and with sleepless vigilance, and strength, 

 as it seemed to him, almost miraculously sustained, he con 

 tinued to examine and send on deck for some hours each day, 

 every one of the three hundred passengers. On the first 

 cholera symptoms appearing, he gave the patient chalk, and 

 continued administering it in small but frequent doses until 

 the spasmodic crisis commenced; thence he troubled him 

 only with hot fomentations. The third day out a man died 

 and was buried. The captain read the funeral service, and 



