Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/36

22 place two or three times a day." Indians took care of Jungmann, and nursed him and his father till May, 1732, when they sailed for Philadelphia, where they arrived on the 16th day of that month, having been more than a year on their way there.

Reverend Dr. Kunze, in an oration delivered, in 1788, before the German Society of Philadelphia, stated that of 900 passengers shipped in one vessel in that year at Amsterdam for Philadelphia, 400 had died on the way. Henry T. Vierhaus, Secretary of the same Society, in a report, dated January 22, 1818, thus describes the cause of the mortality on board the ship April, Captain de Groot, just arrived in the Delaware:

"When the passengers came on board at Amsterdam," he says, "there were 233 full freights. The ship was ordered a few miles below Amsterdam to wait for more passengers, but no more came; whereupon the house of Kress & Rodenbrock, the ship-brokers, foreseeing a loss if they did not ship more passengers, proceeded to engage passengers from other vessels which were in the same situation, waiting for freight. These vessels had lain there for a considerable time, and, owing to bad food and poor attendance, those on board were, more or less, sick and full of vermin. These passengers were put on board the ship April, making the whole number near 1,200 souls. The sickness brought on board by those shipped in the manner described spread rapidly through the vessel. When the whole number was crammed into the ship, there were among them about 120 sick. Captain de Groot was ordered by Kress & Rodenbrock to put to sea, against which the captain protested, giving as a reason that he would not undertake the voyage with so many sick; that 115 dead persons had already been sent on shore; and that he did not think there was a sufficiency of provisions for such a large number. In consequence of this protest, the Amsterdam police sent four doctors on board, to examine into the state of the passengers and of the vessel. They found the ship in such a shocking condition that it was ordered into Quarantine at the Island of Wieringen. Here all the sick were put into the hospital, and the healthy separated from them. They remained there 19 weeks, and about 300 died, besides the 115 who were sent on shore dead."