CHAPTER I. 



THE AUTHORS MOTIVES FOR EMIGRATION; PREPA 

 RATION FOR THE VOYAGE; EMBARKATION, AND 



PASSAGE OUT. 



I SHALL premise the causes of leaving my native country, 

 and reasons for preferring the United States ; in doing which 

 I am only describing the misfortunes and fate of thousands 

 of rny countrymen. 



I took a farm previous to the close of the late war (about 

 1813), on a seven years lease, and of course at a high 

 rental. The year following, peace came, and with it ruin 

 to nearly one-fourth of the agriculturists. My landlord 

 compelled me to hold the farm for the term I had taken, 

 with but a small and insufficient abatement of rent. The 

 consequence was, that with strict attention to economy and 

 industry, at the close of my lease I had lost one-half of my 

 little capital, the remains of which not being sufficient to 

 stock the farm, T was obliged to give it up, although offered 

 it at one half the former rent. I then took his Majesty s 

 ministers advice, that &quot; if farming would not answer, farmers 

 must engage in some other business.&quot; I engaged in another 

 business, but through the shortness of my funds, and a com 

 bination of untoward circumstances, I lost the remainder of 

 my property. I now determined to leave a country that no 

 longer afforded me a respectable and comfortable subsist 

 ence, thinking no person with one spark of independent 

 spirit, could hesitate a moment in a choice between honor 

 able, though even laborious, exertion and dangers, with in 

 dependence, to a dronish uselessness in society, or a mean 

 ignoble dependence on friends. 



Van Diemen s Island and the United States presented me 

 with a choice of place for my exile. I weighed the in 

 ducements held out by each, deliberately, and their attrac 

 tions counterpoised in the balance for some time, until the 



