204 IRISH AFFECTION FOR THEIR HOME RELATIONS. 



ing direct from California, setting whole neighbourhoods 

 astir ; and in one case, a hundred dollars remitted by a 

 man to his wife, convinced a dozen young men forthwith 

 that all was true which they had heard, and started them 

 off to join the thousand adventurers who had gone before 

 them. 



So it is with emigrants from this country. A letter 

 from a connection or acquaintance determines the choice 

 of a place to go to, and, without further inquiry, the 

 emigrant starts. Thus for a while emigration to a given 

 V point, once begun, goes on progressively by a kind of 

 innate force. Those who go before urge those who follow, 

 by hasty and inaccurate representations ; so that, the 

 more numerous the settlers from a particular district, the 

 more numerous also the invitations for others to follow, 

 till the fever of emigration subsides. 



In other words, in proportion as the home-born settlers 

 in one of these new countries increases, will the number 

 of home-born emigrants to that country increase but 

 for a time only, if the place have real disadvantages. 



In the case of the Irish a people among whom 

 nobody who knows them will deny that large and warm 

 hearts naturally exist there is an additional reason 

 which leads to this result. Arrived on the foreign shore, 

 the Irish boy or girl thinks less of personal comfort than 

 of the brother, or sister, or mother, they have left in the 

 &quot; ould country ;&quot; and the hoarded earnings of their 

 industry are accumulated, till they can be transmitted to 

 bring over the other members of the family to join them. 

 I doubt if either the Scotch or the English care so much, 

 or do so much, when abroad, for their relations at home. 

 Perhaps it may be that it is generally the poorest from 

 these two British countries who leave their homes, 

 and they leave no poorer relations behind them ; 

 whereas the sum necessary to take a family to New 

 York would be comparative wealth to many a peasant s 



