NOTE s. 305 



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 Pa- 

 cific Ocean. Both these classes are usually as filthy and dis- 

 gusting specimens of humanity as can well be conceived, hav- 

 ing this difference, however, that the former are perfectly in- 

 corrigible, 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 endeavor of reform- 

 era in one much-needed department of their endeavors. Sul- 

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

 are now in their quarters for several yeai-s. 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 iii rough weather), here some twenty or five-and-twen- 

 ty 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 rigors of the polar regions, or cool- 

 ing appliances under the equator, these men, with their chests 

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

 and again examining this feature of their arrangements, and 

 comparing 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 pro- 

 nounced princely, enviable even in all the requisites of room- 

 iness, light, ventilation, and facility for seclusion. 



Here, with no possibility of classification and separate quar- 

 ters, with few or no books, or opportunity to use them if they 

 were possessed, with the constant din of roystering disorder, 

 superabundant profanity, and teeming lasciviousuess of con- 

 versation and songs, with no Sabbath, no prayer, no words 

 and efforts by superiors to win them to something better and 



u 



