Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/92

78 pay, and extorted payment again from them by threatening to put them ashore at Rome.

"During the present season, Sterling sent a lot of passengers by canal-boat J. R. Jacobs Jacobs, Captain to Buffalo or Rochester, and paid Captain Jacobs their passage; but on the way out the latter compelled them to pay it over again."

Passengers are frequently crowded," says Josiah Clarke, "into the steerage of a boat half-full of merchandise and luggage, so that they have no accommodation, and are sometimes compelled to pay their passage over again by the captain. I have often thought something should be done to protect passengers against the outrageous frauds of crowding them into the hold of an old canal-boat at a large price, when there are a great many good and convenient boats ready and willing to take them forward at half the money."

Reverend Dr. J. N. Wyckoff writes: "I have seen a canal-boat, first so filled with luggage as to reach within four feet of the deck, and then more people required to be housed upon the luggage than could be laid down in two parallel rows from the stem to the stern of the boat."

The lake steamers did not offer any better accommodations. We quote, as an instance, the propeller Phoenix, which, on November, 1847, was destroyed by fire while it had two hundred and seventy emigrants on board, who almost all perished in the flames. "I went on board the Phoenix (before she left Buffalo on her last trip)," testifies Elic Van Valkenburgh, "and found her almost entirely filled with merchandise; so much so that passengers could have no accommodations below deck. There was a stateroom overhead, to which the emigrants had not access; and their only accommodations were such as could be found on deck, with a roof or deck overhead, supported by posts, with no side enclosings. There were plenty of steamers at Buffalo at the time, and of the first class, on board of which they could have been shipped at two dollars each. The propeller remained in port some ten days after the emigrants were put on board."

"I left the emigrant business," deposes James Roach, one of the lowest runners, "because I was sick of it; the way business