Foster thus describes the agreeable nature of his reception:—
On the morning of the 31st October, I presented the letter to Captain ---. He asked me the purport of it, and bade me read it. Having read out one-third of it, he said that was enough, and that he knew what I was; I was a damned pirate, a damned rascal and that he would put me in irons and on bread and water throughout the rest of the voyage. The first mate then came up, and abused me foully and blasphemously, and pushed me down, bidding me get out of that, as I was a damned b---- . He was found by one of the passengers soon afterwards, heating a thick bar of iron at the kitchen fire; the cook said, 'What is he doing that for?' and the mate said, 'There is a damned b---- on board, to whom I intend giving a singeing before he leaves the ship.'
As a single example of the treatment to which the helpless and the feeble are exposed from brutes who luxuriate in violence and blasphemy, this incident, the more impressive because of the homely language in which it is told, may be given:—
A delicate old man, named John M'Corcoran, of berth No. 111, informed me that on Sunday last he had just come on deck, and, after washing, was wringing a pair of stockings, when the first mate gave him such a severe kick with his knee on his backside as he was stooping down, that he threw him down upon the deck, since which he has been obliged to go to the watercloset three or four times a day, passing blood every time.
These extracts, quoted with the purpose of illustrating the harsh, brutal, and dishonest conduct too often practised against emigrants in some ships mostly sailing ships are relied on as accurate, being vouched for by the signature of a gentleman whose name has long been associated with deeds of active humanity and practical benevolence.
Within sight of the wished-for land, the trials of the emigrant might be said to have begun rather than to have ended; or rather the trials on land succeeded to the trials on sea.
Previously to the year 1847, the alien emigrant was left either to the general quarantine and poor-laws, or to
