Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/35

Rh turning into an alley between two of the buildings on Baker street. We followed through a dirty passage, so narrow, a stout man would have found it tight work to have threaded it. Looking before us, the yard seemed unusually dark. This, we found, was occasioned by a long range of two story pens, with a projecting boarded walk above the lower tier for the inhabitants of the second story to get to the doors of their apartments. This covered nearly all the narrow yard, and served to exclude light from the dwellings below. We looked in every one of these dismal abodes of human wretchedness. Here were dark, damp holes six feet square, without a bed in any of them, and generally without furniture, occupied by one or two families; apartments where privacy of any kind was unknown ; where comfort never appeared. We endeavored, with the aid of as much light as at mid-day could find access through the open door, to see into the dark corners of these contracted abodes; and as we became impressed with their utter desolateness, the absence of bedding, and of aught to rest on but a bit of old matting on a wet floor, we felt sick and oppressed. Disagreeable odors of many kinds were ever arising; and with no ventilation but the open door, and the foot square hole in the front of the pen, Aye could scarcely think it possible that life could be supported, when winter compelled them to have fire in charcoal furnaces. With sad feelings we went from door to door, speaking to all, inquiring the number of their inmates, the rent they paid, and generally the business they followed to obtain a living. To this last question the usual answer was 'ragging and boning.' Some of these six by six holes had six and even eight persons in them, but more generally two to four. In one or two instances, a single man rented one for himself. The last of the lower story of the 'Astor' was occupied by a black man, his black wife, and an Irish woman. The white woman was half standing, half leaning against some sort of a box, the blacks were reclining upon the piece of old matting, perhaps four feet wide, which, by night, furnished the only bed of the three. Passing to the end of the row, we ventured up steps much broken, and very unsafe, to the second story platform, and visited each apartment there. It is not in the power of language to convey an adequate impression of the scene on this property; the filth, the odor, the bodily discomfort, the moral degradation everywhere apparent. Descending with difficulty, we proceeded to examine the cellars and rooms in a building still further back, having the same owner. The same want of accommodations were observed; few, if any, there, having a trace of bedding. For the pens, ten cents a night were paid generally; eight 3