patriarch was nursing an infant to sleep in
his feeble arms, while a young woman
prepared its little bed. There seemed to be no
other person of their party; their cabin was
but poorly furnished, and in her thin sorrowful
face and the old man's stricken form, I
thought I could read their little history of
sorrow and suffering. They were not going
to the Diggings to escape from the scenes of
the past; a new life in a new world was her
sole object, and the old father cared for
nothing but to accompany her.

In one densely packed cabin I saw the
fragments of several families busily engaged
in quarrelling about their respective shares
of space. How they intended to stow a
tithe of the lumber scattered and piled about,
I was at a loss to imagine. Somebody had
knocked the cork out of a bottle of ink, the
contents of which had flowed in sable streams
over bed-clothing, towelling, and children's
dresses, indelibly marking them in the wrong
places. Next to these noisy malcontents were a
party of four females, two of whom were rather
advanced in years, and stout withal. There
were great lamentations proceeding from
these ladies, who had evidently some deep
distress weighing upon their minds. As I
halted near their cabin door, one of the heavy
females was seeking the advice and consolation
of a fellow passenger, in their difficulty;
which appeared to consist in the dreaded
impossibility of their being able to get into one
of the beds. The lower sleeping-place was
all right; one stout lady would blend
with a thin one beautifully, though there
would be no width to spare; but how and
by what imaginary contrivance the other
stout lady was to arrive at her destination for
the night, seemed to them a matter of the
wildest speculation. The cabin was too low
for a ladder, and the berth was too high for
a box or a folding-stool to be of the least
service beyond aggravating the temper, and
perhaps bruising a few limbs.

Passing forward to near the fore-hatchway,
I came upon a scene of open war. One
of the ship's officers was endeavouring to read
a sort of impromptu riot-act to a party of
cockney warriors who were doing all sorts
of violent deeds in a dark smothered up cabin,
which was evidently in a state of determined
siege. The lookers-on cried, "Shame! turn
them out!—where's the captain?" mingled
with rather warm benedictions on the ship's
broker, and the secretary of some emigration
committee. The officer would have interfered,
but the bystanders opposed him, and it ended
in his disappearing on deck, and the siege of
the darkened little cabin being raised. I
learnt afterwards, when quiet was partly
restored, that the fracas arose from the brokers
having shipped more passengers than could
be accommodated; a dozen persons had been,
two days before, removed from the ship by
the emigration officers; but in their place at
least a score more had been sent on board,
and where they were to find room was now
the question. The captain had been trying to
place two men in some single berths.

But this, I ascertained, was not all of the
mismanagement, or imposition, or both, from
which these unfortunate emigrants suffered.
A great number of them had paid for their
passages through some emigration society,
which had secured room for them in the bulk,
at a stated sum. Now, however, at the
twelfth hour, these poor people were told
that the brokers had demanded two pounds
a head more from the society, owing, it was
stated, to the rise in sailors' wages; and they
accordingly found themselves called upon to
make good the amount from their scanty
purses. It was not to be wondered at, therefore,
that there should be a considerable
amount of angry feeling amongst the three
hundred and odd emigrants on board the
Jeremy Diddler. Neither was it matter for
surprise that fault was found with the cook
for being too idle to clean his soup coppers
out, and allowing an accumulation of filthy,
rank dirt around them, to the actual spoiling
of what might have been very respectable
soup.

By way of interlude to the recent siege, an
emigrant orator mounted on a sea-chest, as
well as the pitching of the ship would allow
him, and addressing his fellow passengers in
terms of brotherly commiseration, which
might have suited Marc Anthony's oration to
the Romans, he drew a heart-rending picture
of their distresses, not omitting the dirty soup
and the absence of the patent ventilators
spoken of in such large letters in the broker's
bills. The speaker was the man with the
casky voice and the Surrey nauticals. How
long he would have held forth I cannot
undertake to surmise, for his eloquence was
brought to a sudden close by the heavy fall
of the fore-hatch, which enclosed us all in
utter darkness. The rain was beginning to
pour, and the deck strollers crept down as
well as they could.

The close, stifled atmosphere of the 'tween
decks, breathed as it was by several hundred
persons, soon became insupportable, and there
was a general attack made upon the hatch,
which, however, was too well secured above
to allow of any success. The tide of indignation
vented itself upon the main-hatch,
through which a party of a dozen passed to
the captain with expostulation as to the want
of fresh air. After some delay, the fore hatch
was partially removed, and an old tattered
windsail was let down as a substitute for the
patent ventilators. In spite of this relief, the
impurity and suffocating heat of the cabins
became as insupportable as the exhalations
from some Indian jungle-swamp; and I could
but picture to myself the sufferings of those
people when approaching the equator.

The cabins were built up, two deep, on both
sides, and made to contain never less than two
sleeping places; often four. To reach the