Page:Irish In America.djvu/222

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THE IRISH IN AMERICA.

isolation or their disappointment the more poignantly from there being no word of love, no sign of welcome to hail their arrival. The passengers are transferred to the steamer, and their baggage to the barge, and landed at Castle Garden, where their names and destinations are entered in a book kept for that purpose. In the large building at the disposal of the Commissioners the emigrants may obtain the luxury of a thorough ablution, and the comfort of the first meal on solid land ; and those who have brought out money with them, or for whom their friends have sent remittances in anticipation of their arrival, and who desire to push on North, South, or West may at once start on their journey. They can change their money for the currency of the country, and purchase railway tickets to any part of the United States or Canada, and do so without going outside the building, or risking the loss of its salutary protection. They and their baggage are conveyed to the railway depot, from which they start on their inland journey, fortunate indeed in not having a single feather plucked from their wing by watchful harpy. Of many important and valuable departments of this Landing Depot, those for the exchange of money and the sale of railway or steamboat tickets are not the least impor tant or valuable. In the exchange department various na tionalities are represented ; and for a small percentage, sufficient to remunerate the broker without oppressing the emigrant, English and Irish, Germans, French, Swedes, Danes, and others, may procure reliable money not flash notes for their gold and silver and paper currency. The exchange brokers admitted to do business in Castle Garden are men of respectability ; but were they inclined to take and applied to their forwarding. The amount received at the Landing Tepft was 57,359 dollars ; at the office of the Irish Fmigrant Society, 21,226 dollars ; at the office of the German Society, 25,613J.; besides other sums, amounting to about 4,000 dollars.