University of Virginia Library

58. CHAPTER LVIII.

Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes,
have frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen
days; yet, it is not uncommon for other vessels to be forty,
or fifty, and even sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in
making the same passage. Though in the latter cases, some
signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so great a detention.
It is also true, that generally the passage out from
America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed
to the prevalence of westerly winds.

We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty
days, still harassed by head-winds, though with pleasant
weather upon the whole, when we were visited by a succession
of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of a week.

During this interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain
below; but this was nothing strange to some of them; who,
not recovering, while at sea, from their first attack of seasickness,
seldom or never made their appearance on deck,
during the entire passage.

During the week, now in question, fire was only once
made in the public galley. This occasioned a good deal of
domestic work to be done in the steerage, which otherwise
would have been done in the open air. When the lulls of
the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to
toss into the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct

some of these ignorant people in the simplest, and most
elemental principles of ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on
the subject, several would continue to shun the leeward side
of the vessel, with their slops. One morning, when it was
blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in
his face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened
to be standing by at the time. The offender was
collared, and shaken on the spot; and ironically commanded,
never, for the future, to throw any thing to windward at sea,
but fine ashes and scalding hot water.

During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the
hatchways on the steerage were, at intervals, hermetically
closed; sealing down in their noisome den, those scores of
human beings. It was something to be marveled at, that
the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago, overtook the
poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment,
did not overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.

Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement
in so close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined
to the deprivation of sufficient food, from which many were
suffering; which, helped by their personal uncleanliness,
brought on a malignant fever.

The first report was, that two persons were affected. No
sooner was it known, than the mate promptly repaired to
the medicine-chest in the cabin: and with the remedies
deemed suitable, descended into the steerage. But the
medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly grew
worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.

Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and
returning, sought out a certain alleged physician among the
cabin-passengers; begging him to wait upon the sufferers;
hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the disease from
extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
being a physician; and from fear of contagion—though he

did not confess that to be the motive—refused even to enter
the steerage.

The cases increased: the utmost alarm spread through
the ship: and scenes ensued, over which, for the most part,
a vail must be drawn; for such is the fastidiousness of some
readers, that, many times, they must lose the most striking
incidents in a narrative like mine.

Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have
domiciled on deck; but being so scantily clothed, the
wretched weather—wet, cold, and tempestuous—drove the
best part of them again below. Yet any other human
beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous
storm, than continued to breathe the pestilent air of the
steerage. But some of these poor people must have been so
used to the most abasing calamities, that the atmosphere of
a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.

The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks;
and the emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage,
threw up a barricade in front of those bunks; so as to
cut off communication. But this was no sooner reported to
the captain, than he ordered it to be thrown down; since
it could be of no possible benefit; but would only make still
worse, what was already direful enough.

It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening
and coaxing, that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors
below, to accomplish the captain's order.

The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched
indeed. It was like entering a crowded jail. From the
rows of rude bunks, hundreds of meager, begrimed faces
were turned upon us; while seated upon the chests, were
scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the
native air of the place, which from almost unbelievable
causes, was foetid in the extreme. In every corner, the
females were huddled together, weeping and lamenting;
children were asking bread from their mothers, who had

none to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were
leaning back against the heads of the water-casks, with
closed eyes and fetching their breath with a gasp.

At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding
the invalids; while—notwithstanding the crowd—in front
of it was a clear area, which the fear of contagion had left
open.

“That bulkhead must come down,” cried the mate, in a
voice that rose above the din. “Take hold of it, boys.”

But hardly had we touched the chests composing it,
when a crowd of pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and
with terrific howls, swore they would slay us, if we did not
desist.

“Haul it down!” roared the mate.

But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about
merchant seamen having no pensions in case of being maimed,
and they had not shipped to fight fifty to one. Further
efforts were made by the mate, who at last had recourse to
entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to depart,
without achieving our object.

About four o'clock that morning, the first four died.
They were all men; and the scenes which ensued were
frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the bottomless profound
of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed nothing
more frightful.

Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this
was unnecessary. By their own countrymen, they were torn
from the clasp of their wives, rolled in their own bedding,
with ballast-stones, and with hurried rites, were dropped into
the ocean.

At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and
with a degree of devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended
them with his medicines; but the captain did not
again go down to them.

It was all-important now that the steerage should be
purified; and had it not been for the rains and squalls, which

would have made it madness to turn such a number of women
and children upon the wet and unsheltered decks, the steerage
passengers would have been ordered above, and their den
have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present,
this was out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused
to go among the defilements to remove them; and so
besotted were the greater part of the emigrants themselves,
that though the necessity of the case was forcibly painted to
them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed
their own salvation.

The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear
of contagion to themselves, the cabin passengers would fain
have made a prisoner of the captain, to prevent him from
going forward beyond the mainmast. Their clamors at last
induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present they
must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
quarters, which communicated with the cabin.

On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many
can flee from an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are
locked and bolted in the very hospital itself. Nor is there
any possibility of escape from it; and in so small and crowded
a place, no precaution can effectually guard against contagion.

Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin,
perhaps, presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who
had seldom prayed before, now implored the merciful heavens,
night and day, for fair winds and fine weather. Trunks
were opened for Bibles; and at last, even prayer-meetings
were held over the very table across which the loud jest had
been so often heard.

Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly
nearer prospect of that death which any body at any time
may die, should produce these spasmodic devotions, when an
everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever thinning our ranks;
and die by death we all must at last.

On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little

tailor: on the third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one
was the Greenland sailor, and another, a woman in the
cabin, whose death, however, was afterward supposed to
have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths
brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers, cabinpassengers,
and emigrants—all looked upon each other like
lepers. All but the only true leper among us—the mariner
Jackson, who seemed elated with the thought, that for him
—already in the deadly clutches of another disease—no
danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only
swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of
the despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not
cast down; not, at least, by the same considerations that
appalled the rest.

And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft
beat on; now on this tack, now on that; battling against
hostile blasts, and drenched in rain and spray; scarcely
making an inch of progress toward her port.

On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale,
to which we stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten
hours' time, the waves ran in mountains; and the Highlander
rose and fell like some vast buoy on the water.
Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while
we gave to the gale the blackened bodies of five more of the
dead.

But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were
filled in the rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants,
whom the plague, panic, and gale had hurried into the
world before their time. The first cry of one of these
infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But,
surrounded by death, both mothers and babes survived.

At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling
sea; and, for the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.

In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the

windlass, watching the billows; which, seen in the night,
seemed real hills, upon which fortresses might have been
built; and real valleys, in which villages, and groves, and
gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often
tumbled the white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches;
while the seething and boiling that ensued, seemed the
swallowing up of human beings.

By afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided;
and we bore down on the waves, with all our canvas set;
stun' sails alow and aloft; and our best steersman at the
helm; the captain himself at his elbow;—bowling along,
with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.

The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then,
all the emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves
out on deck, snuffing the delightful air, spreading their damp
bedding in the sun, and regaling themselves with the generous
charity of the captain, who of late had seen fit to
increase their allowance of food. A detachment of them
now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the
steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough
cleansing, sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful
of defilements. It was more like cleaning out a stable,
than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried
three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us,
with seven convalescent; who, placed near the opening of
the hatchway, soon rallied under the skillful treatment, and
even tender care of the mate.

But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension
was still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand
Banks of Newfoundland, the fogs, so generally encountered
there, might bring on a return of the fever. But, to the joy
of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we made a
rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered
for New York.

Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind

abated, yet we still ran our course over a pleasant sea.
The steerage-passengers—at least by far the greater number
—wore a still, subdued aspect, though a little cheered by
the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon reaching
their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives,
or children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they
were. Hard and bitter indeed was their lot; for with the
poor and desolate, grief is no indulgence of mere sentiment,
however sincere, but a gnawing reality, that eats into their
vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and bland
physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they
must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers
throw down the hammer to lift up the coffin.

How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand
miles from home, suddenly found themselves deprived of
brothers and husbands, with but a few pounds, or perhaps
but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange land?

As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund
as they? drawing nigh, with their long purses and goodly
portmanteaus to the promised land, without fear of fate.
One and all were generous and gay, the jelly-eyed old
gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the steward.

The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American,
returning from a visit to an only brother in London.
She had no friend or relative on board, hence, as
there is little mourning for a stranger dying among strangers,
her memory had been buried with her body.

But the thing most worthy of note among these now
light-hearted people in feathers, was the gay way in which
some of them bantered others, upon the panic into which
nearly all had been thrown.

And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of
peril, proves grounded on causes sufficient, they must then
indeed come to perish;—therefore it is, that at such times
they must make up their minds either to die, or else survive
to be taunted by their fellow-men with their fear. For

except in extraordinary instances of exposure, there are few
living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit that
any other living men have ever been very much nearer death
than themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too
often applied to any one who, with however good reason,
has been appalled at the prospect of sudden death, and yet
lived to escape it. Though, should he have perished in conformity
with his fears, not a syllable of craven would you
hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has
beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced.
The subject invites much subtle speculation; for
in every being's ideas of death, and his behavior when it
suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life and his
faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun,
Socrates died the death of the Christian; and though Hume
was not a Christian in theory, yet he, too, died the death of
the Christian,—humble, composed, without bravado; and
though the most skeptical of philosophical skepties, yet full
of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the spheres.
Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly discoursing
of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon
Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die;
but not even the last of these three, perhaps, died the best
death of the Christian.

The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while
the rest kneeled against the transoms and settees, was one
of the merry young sparks, who had occasioned such agonies
of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more. In his rakish
vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all
the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his
companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had
never solicited the slightest favor. More than once had he
been seen thus engaged by the observant steersman at the
helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin
bulk-head.

But this youth was an April man; the storm had

departed; and now he shone in the sun, none braver than
he.

One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to
enter into holy orders upon his arrival in New York.

“Why so?” said the other, “have I such an orotund
voice?”

“No;” profanely returned his friend—“but you are a
coward—just the man to be a parson, and pray.”

However this narrative of the circumstances attending
the fever among the emigrants on the Highlander may
appear; and though these things happened so long ago; yet
just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps taking place to-day.
But the only account you obtain of such events, is
generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the
shipping-head. There is the obituary of the destitute
dead, who die on the sea. They die, like the billows that
break on the shore, and no more are heard or seen. But
in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of
news, who are more taken up with paragraphs of fuller
flavor; what a world of life and death, what a world of
humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a three-worded
sentence!

You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea;
you hear no groans of despair; you see no corpses thrown
over the bulwarks; you mark not the wringing hands and
torn hair of widows and orphans:—all is a blank. And
one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the
details of the Highlander's calamity.

Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion
the last woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress
the detailed circumstances of disasters like these. Such
things, if widely known, operate unfavorably to the ship,
and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention at
quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating
light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.

In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be
said, concerning emigrant ships in general.

Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether
such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our
American shores; let us waive it, with the one only thought,
that if they can get here, they have God's right to come;
though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them.
For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world;
there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great
Wall of China. But we waive all this; and will only
consider, how best the emigrants can come hither, since come
they do, and come they must and will.

Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting
ships to a certain number of emigrants, according to a
certain rate. If this law were enforced, much good might
be done; and so also might much good be done, were the
English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed supply
of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But
it is hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is
observed.

But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches
the hard lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it
obligatory upon the captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers
with decent lodgings, and give them light and
air in that foul den, where they are immured, during a long
voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates
him to place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a
dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking
during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance
obliges him to give them more room on deck, and let them
have an occasional run fore and aft?—There is no law concerning
these things. And if there was, who but some
Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is
there a Howard in office!

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but
may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?

We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its
voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that
one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what
Christianity is striving to make us.