Page:Irish In America.djvu/202

180 for a time ineffectually, one could scarcely credit the lengths to which those who lived upon plunder carried their audacity. Little did the intending emigrants know of the difficulties and dangers that lay in their path in every stage of their momentous journey by land and water, by city and by sea. Little knew the poor mother, as she imparted her last benediction to her 'boy and girl'—the adventurous pioneers of the family—the perils that lay in her children's way; how fraud and robbery, and in friendly guise too, would track them across the ocean, perhaps sail with them in the same ship, even lie with them in the same berth; and how nothing short of the interposition of a merciful Providence could save them from utter and irremediable ruin.

The ships, of which such glowing accounts were read on Sunday by the Irish peasant, on the flaming placards posted near the chapel gate, were but too often old and unseaworthy, insufficient in accommodation, without the means of maintaining the most ordinary decency, with bad or scanty provisions, not having even an adequate supply of water for a long voyage; and to render matters worse, they, as a rule rather than as the exception, were shamefully underhanded. True, the provisions and the crew passed muster in Liverpool—for, twenty years since, and long after, it was from that port the greater number of the emigrants to America sailed; but there were tenders and lighters to follow the vessel out to sea; and over the sides of that vessel several of the mustered men would pass, and casks, and boxes, and sacks would be expeditiously hoisted, to the amazement of the simple people, who looked on at the strange, and to them unaccountable operation. And thus the great ship, with its living freight would turn her prow towards the West, depending on her male passengers, as upon so many impressed seamen, to handle her ropes, or to work her pumps in case of accident, which was only too common under such circumstances.