50 EMIGRATION OF STEPHANISTS. [CHAP. XXIII. 



Another inmate of the ladies cabin was a German stewardess, 

 who soon found out that my wife understood her mother tongue, 

 and, being in great want of sympathy, poured out her tale of suf 

 fering in the New World with the simplicity of character and 

 unreservedness of her countrywomen. Seven years ago she had 

 been a happy and contented peasant at Chemnitz in Saxony, one 

 of a united family of Lutherans, when she was persuaded by a 

 priest to embrace the opinions of Martin Stephan, a preacher of 

 Dresden, who taught that all theological study should be confined 

 to the Bible ; that literature and the fine arts, being of human 

 origin and worldly in their nature, ought to be despised ; that no 

 one could enjoy freedom of conscience in Germany ; and that the 

 only path to salvation was to follow him, and emigrate to North 

 America. He himself was to be their temporal and spiritual 

 chief, and to him they were to deliver up all their property. In 

 November, 1838, 700 victims of this impostor embarked from 

 Bremen, including six pastors and four schoolmasters. One of 

 the transports, the Amelia, carrying about sixty emigrants, in 

 cluding children, a crazy old ship, was never heard of again, and 

 doubtless foundered on the Atlantic. The other carried Stephan 

 and the rest of his followers to New Orleans, from whence they 

 ascended the Mississippi, and founded a settlement, called Witt 

 enberg, on a rich, aguish flat, bordering the Missouri, above St. 

 Louis. Here one-fourth of their number were swept off by fever, 

 and Stephan, who had deserted a wife and nine children in Ger 

 many, was detected carrying on a licentious intercourse with some 

 of the women of the new community. Before, however, this 

 scandal became notorious, he contrived to make off with all the 

 money which had been intrusted to him to buy land for the new 

 colony. Hanne Rottgen, the young woman who related this 

 story, went, as soon as she recovered from the ague, to St. Louis, 

 her eyes having at length been opened, like those of many other 

 Stephanists, to the fraud of which they had been the dupes. She 

 was immediately employed to attend a hospital filled with num 

 bers of her poor country people of both sexes, who had been 

 scalded by the bursting of the boiler of a large steam-boat. After 

 witnessing the terrible sufferings and death of not a few of these 



