multitude. And such a multitude! Three-fifths
Irish, one-fifth Germans, and a timid,
irresolute, scared, woe-begone fifth of English,
who look as if they had gone to sleep in
Liverpool and had been knocked up in the
Tower of Babel. A confusion of tongues, a
confusion of tubs, a confusion of boxes. A
flux of barbarous words, a tangle of children
settling on bulkheads and ladder-rounds like
locusts. And an odour! ugh! let us go on
deck, whither all the passengers follow us;
for the muster-roll is being called, and as
the authorities verify the name and passage-money
receipt of each emigrant, the Government
Emigration agent ascertains that there
are no cases of infectious disease among
the passengers; no lame, halt, and blind;
no paralytics and no bedridden dotards.
Andy O'Scullabogue of Ballyshandy, County
Cork, is turned back for having a trifle of five
children ill with a putrid fever. Judith
Murphy can by no means be passed, for
she is appallingly crippled. Florence M'Shane
is sent on shore because he is blind, and
Terence Rooney, because his mother has only
one leg. These poor wretches have been
scrambling and scraping their passage-money
together for months. The two pounds ten
have come, sixpence by sixpence—nay, penny
by penny, from the peelings of diseased potatoes;
from the troughs of gaunt, greyhound-like
pigs; down long ladders in hods of
mortar, in London or in Dublin; out of
damaged oranges in Saint Giles's and Bethnal
Green. They are the economies from
relinquished gin glasses and eschewed tobacco;
the savings of denied red-herrings, and half
rations of potatoes. Some of the emigrants
have begged their passage-money; some, are
about to emigrate at the expense of the
parish, and some have had their passage-money
remitted to them from their friends in
America.

While the ceremony of "passing" has been
going on on deck, the crew of the vessel have
been below, searching for stowaways—unfortunate
creatures too poor to pay the
necessary sum, who have concealed
themselves in out-of-the-way holes and corners,
thinking to escape detection in the general
confusion, and to be conveyed across the
Atlantic free of expense. But, they are mistaken.
You must get up very early in the
morning if you would essay to get on the
blind side of an American sailor; and not
many minutes have elapsed before two ragged
women are discovered in some hideous crevice,
and a wretched dwarf, clutching a fiddle under
his shrunken arm, is detected in a cask, his heels
upwards, and coiled up into a perfect Gordian
knot of deformity. I do not exaggerate, and
I libel no one when I say, that after they
have been well hustled and bonnetted on the
deck, these forlorn beings are kicked over the
side by the chief mate, a gigantic mariner in
a tail-coat, raised in Connecticut, and with a
huge brown fist, so hard, so horny, so corrugated
with knotted veins, that it looks like
the fist of that slave-dealer alluded to by the
authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"—as if it
"had grown hard in knocking down niggers."
"For," says the mate, jerking a jet of tobacco
juice and an explanation to me across his
shoulder, "you must jest ketch 'em up sharp,
you must, these Irishers, and that's a fact.
It's a word and a blow here, and no flies."
And this latter axiom the chief officer religiously
carries out in all his dealings with the
steerage passengers, anathematising the eyes
of any refractory emigrant for the first offence,
and knocking him down like an ox for the
second.

I stumble aft, as well as I can for luggage,
human and inanimate, and take a peep into
the saloon, where there is a negro steward in.
a white jacket, and where there are soft
carpets, emollient couches, gaily-decorated
panels, comfortable state-rooms, silken
hangings, and a regiment of spittoons carved
and gilt in the Louis Quatorze style,
and quite gorgeous to behold. A passenger
I find below seems so delighted with his
bed, that he is continually lying down on it,
then jumping up, falling back half-a-dozen
paces on the bright Brussels carpet, and regarding
the trim couch with rapt ecstasy—
rubbing his hands meanwhile with the
anticipation of quite a surfeit of luxuries for his
sixteen guineas. But, a little bird which has
accompanied me, whispers that the Elizabeth
Scradgers will be no sooner out of the river
than the bright carpets will be rolled up and
the painted panels unscrewed, and the silken
hangings, and mahogany fittings, and soft
couches disappear, to be replaced by bare
boards, and scrubby horsehair, and hard beds
—the luxuries being reserved for the next
departure from port. What else the little
bird would tell me I know not, for at this
moment comes Captain Peleg J. Whittlestick
from his cabin, with loud and nasal
injunction for all strangers to "clear!" He
is as like in voice, person, and dress to the
captain of the Z. W. Caucus as two cherries
are like each other. The Government emigration
agent, the surgeon, the broker, the captain's
friends, and I who write, step on board
the tug. "Cheerily, cheerily, oh!" begins
that dismal windlass chorus as the anchor
is being hove up; the emigrants give a sickly
cheer, and another ship-load of humanity
is off.

The mysterious agency which whilom removed
the dock bridge from beneath my
feet, has slowly ground it (with a rusty
grumble as of iron chains in torture) into its
place again, and I cross over to the other side.

Dock upon dock, quays after quays, "quay
berths," loading and unloading sheds, long
lines of bonding warehouses, barrels, bales,
boxes, pitch, tar, ropes, preserved provisions,
water-casks, and exodus everywhere! Whole
tribes of north-country people, and west-country
people, and all sorts of country