Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/216

188 of the quarantine-bound ships were naturally desirous of getting rid as speedily as possible of their dangerous and unprofitable freight; and the manner in which the helpless people were landed or thrown on the island aggravated their sufferings, and in a vast number of instances precipitated their fate. Then the hunger and thirst from which they suffered in the badly found ships, between whose crowded and stifling decks they had been so long pent up, had so far destroyed their vital energy that they had but little chance of life when once struck down.

About the middle of June the young chaplain was attacked by the pestilence. For ten days he had not taken off his clothes, and his boots, which he constantly wore for all that time, had to be cut from his feet. A couple of months elapsed before he resumed his duties; but when he returned to his post of danger the mortality was still of fearful magnitude. Several priests, a few Irish, the majority French Canadians, caught the infection; and of the twenty-five who were attacked, seven paid with their lives the penalty of their devotion. Not a few of these men were professors in colleges; but at the appeal of the Archbishop they left their classes and their studies for the horrors and perils of the fever sheds.

It was not until the 1st of November that the quarantine of Grosse Isle was closed. Upon that barren isle as many as 10,000 of the Irish race were consigned to the grave-pit. By some the estimate is made much higher, and 12,000 is considered nearer the actual number. A register was kept, and is still in existence, but it does not commence earlier than June 16, when the mortality was nearly at its height. According to this death-roll, there were buried, between the 16th and 30th of June, 487 Irish immigrants "whose names could not be ascertained." In July, 941 were thrown into nameless graves; and in August, 918 were entered in the register under the comprehensive description—"unknown." There were interred, from the 16th of June to the closing of the quarantine for that year, 2,905 of a Christian people, whose names could not be discovered amidst the confusion and carnage of that fatal summer. In the following year 2,000 additional victims were entered in the same register, without name or trace of any kind to tell who they were or whence they had come. Thus 5,000 out of the total number of victims were simply described as "unknown."

REPORT ON THE CONDITION OF THE SHIP LEIBNITZ,

OF SLOMAN'S HAMBURG LINE.

, Jan. 22, 1868.

At a regular meeting of the Board of Commissioners of Emigration, held Wednesday, the 22d day of January, 1868, the Vice-President, Frederick S.