EMIGRANT PASSENGERS. 15 



[something] when he came on board. So much for burnt chalk 

 and fresh air ! 



But seriously, this story, (which, as I have repeated it, I 

 believe is essentially true,) though not in itself a painful one, not 

 the less strikingly shows with what villainous barbarity, by dis- 

 regard or evasion of the laws of England, and the neglect or 

 connivance of the port officers, the emigrant traffic is carried on. 

 Some of the accounts of the three other medical men on board, 

 who are also returning from passages in emigrant ships, would 

 disgust a slave-trader. They say that many of the passengers 

 will never go on deck unless they are driven or carried, and fre- 

 quently the number of these is so great, that it is impossible to 

 force them out of their berths, and they sometimes lie in them in 

 the most filthy manner possible, without ever stepping out from 

 the first heave of the sickening sea till the American pilot is 

 received on board. Then their wives, husbands, children, as the 

 case may be, who have served them with food during their pros- 

 tration, get them up, and, if they can afford it, change their 

 garments, throwing the old ones, with the bed and its accumula- 

 tions, overboard. So, as any one may see, from a dozen ships a 

 day often in New York, they come ashore with no disease but 

 want of energy, but emaciated, enfeebled, infected, and covered 

 with vermin. When we observe the listlessness, even cheerful- 

 ness, with which they accept the precarious and dog-like subsist- 

 ence which, while in this condition, the already crowded city 

 affords them, we see the misery and degradation to which they 

 must have been habituated in their native land. When in a year 

 afterwards we find that the same poor fellows are plainly growing 

 active, hopeful, enterprising, prudent, and, if they have been 

 favorably situated, cleanly, tidy, and actually changing to their 

 very bones as it seems tight, elastic, well-knit muscles taking 

 the place of flabby flesh, as ambition and blessed discontent take 



