The Amateur Emigrant

I first encountered my fellow-passengers on the Broomielaw in Glasgow.

Thence we descended the Clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking askance

on each other as on possible enemies. A few Scandinavians, who had

already grown acquainted on the North Sea, were friendly and voluble

over their long pipes; but among English speakers distance and suspicion

reigned supreme. The sun was soon overclouded, the wind freshened and

grew sharp as we continued to descend the widening estuary; and with the

falling temperature the gloom among the passengers increased. Two of the

women wept. Any one who had come aboard might have supposed we were all

absconding from the law. There was scarce a word interchanged, and no

common sentiment but that of cold united us, until at length, having

touched at Greenock, a pointing arm and rush to the starboard bow

announced that our ocean steamer was in sight. There she lay in

mid-river, at the tail of the Bank, her sea-signal flying: a wall of

bulwark, a street of white deck-houses, an aspiring forest of spars,

larger than a church, and soon to be as populous as many an incorporated

town in the land to which she was to bear us.

I was not, in truth, a steerage passenger. Although anxious to see the

worst of emigrant life, I had some work to finish on the voyage, and was

advised to go by the second cabin, where at least I should have a table

at command. The advice was excellent; but to understand the choice, and

what I gained, some outline of the internal disposition of the ship will

first be necessary. In her very nose is Steerage No. 1, down two pair of

stairs. A little abaft, another companion, labelled Steerage No. 2 and

3, gives admission to three galleries, two running forward towards

steerage No. 1, and the third aft towards the engines. The starboard

forward gallery is the second cabin. Away abaft the engines and below

the officers' cabins, to complete our survey of the vessel, there is yet

a third nest of steerages, labelled 4 and 5. The second cabin, to

return, is thus a modified oasis in the very heart of the steerages.

Through the thin partition you can hear the steerage passengers being

sick, the rattle of tin dishes as they sit at meals, the varied accents

in which they converse, the crying of their children terrified by this

new experience, or the clean flat smack of the parental hand in

chastisement.

There are, however, many advantages for the inhabitant of this strip. He

does not require to bring his own bedding or dishes, but finds berths

and a table completely if somewhat roughly furnished. He enjoys a

distinct superiority in diet; but this, strange to say, differs not only

on different ships, but on the same ship according as her head is to the

east or west. In my own experience, the principal difference between our

table and that of the true steerage passenger was the table itself, and

the crockery plates from which we ate. But lest I should show myself

ungrateful, let me recapitulate every advantage. At breakfast we had a

choice between tea and coffee for beverage; a choice not easy to make,

the two were so surprisingly alike. I found that I could sleep after the

coffee and lay awake after the tea; which is proof conclusive of some

chemical disparity; and even by the palate I could distinguish a smack

of snuff in the former from a flavour of boiling and dish-cloths in the

second. As a matter of fact, I have seen passengers, after many sips,

still doubting which had been supplied them. In the way of eatables at

the same meal we were gloriously favoured; for in addition to porridge,

which was common to all, we had Irish stew, sometimes a bit of fish, and

We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and early on the Friday

forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in

Ireland, and said farewell to Europe. The company was now complete, and

began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms, upon the deck. There

were Scots and Irish in plenty, a few English, a few Americans, a good

handful of Scandinavians, a German or two, and one Russian; all now

belonging for ten days to one small iron country on the deep.

As I walked the deck and looked round upon my fellow-passengers, thus

curiously assorted from all northern Europe, I began for the first time

to understand the nature of emigration. Day by day throughout the

passage, and thenceforward across all the States, and on to the shores

of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy.

Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most

dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and

nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at

home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning

restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to

fight for his own hand. The most pleasant stories of ambition, of

difficulties overcome, and of ultimate success, are but as episodes to

this great epic of self-help. The epic is composed of individual

heroisms; it stands to them as the victorious war which subdued an

empire stands to the personal act of bravery which spiked a single

cannon and was adequately rewarded with a medal. For in emigration the

young men enter direct and by the ship-load on their heritage of work;

empty continents swarm, as at the bo's'un's whistle, with industrious

hands, and whole new empires are domesticated to the service of man.

This is the closet picture, and is found, on trial, to consist mostly of

embellishments. The more I saw of my fellow passengers, the less I was

tempted to the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were below

thirty; many were married, and encumbered with families; not a few were

already up in years; and this itself was out of tune with my

imaginations, for the ideal emigrant should certainly be young. Again, I

thought he should offer to the eye some bold type of humanity, with

bluff or hawk-like features, and the stamp of an eager and pushing

disposition. Now those around me were for the most part quiet, orderly,

obedient citizens, family men broken by adversity, elderly youths who

had failed to place themselves in life, and people who had seen better

days. Mildness was the prevailing character; mild mirth and mild

endurance. In a word, I was not taking part in an impetuous and

conquering sally, such as swept over Mexico or Siberia, but found

myself, like Marmion, "in the lost battle, borne down by the flying."

Labouring mankind had in the last years, and throughout Great Britain,

sustained a prolonged and crushing series of defeats. I had heard

vaguely of these reverses; of whole streets of houses standing deserted

by the Tyne, the cellar-doors broken and removed for firewood; of

homeless men loitering at the street-corners of Glasgow with their

chests beside them; of closed factories, useless strikes, and starving

girls. But I had never taken them home to me or represented these

distresses livingly to my imagination. A turn of the market may be a

calamity as disastrous as the French retreat from Moscow; but it hardly

lends itself to lively treatment, and makes a trifling figure in the

morning papers. We may struggle as we please, we are not born

economists. The individual is more affecting than the mass. It is by

the scenic accidents, and the appeal to the carnal eye, that for the

most part we grasp the significance of tragedies. Thus it was only now,

Our companion (Steerage No. 2 and 3) was a favourite resort. Down one

flight of stairs there was a comparatively large open space, the centre

occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient seat for about twenty

persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the carpenter's bench

afforded perches for perhaps as many more. The canteen, or steerage bar,

was on one side of the stair; on the other a no less attractive spot,

the cabin of the indefatigable interpreter. I have seen people packed

into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings

prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly

extinguished and all must go to roost.

It had been rumoured since Friday that there was a fiddler aboard, who

lay sick and unmelodious in Steerage No. 1; and on the Monday forenoon,

as I came down the companion, I was saluted by something in Strathspey

time. A white-faced Orpheus was cheerily playing to an audience of

white-faced women. It was as much as he could do to play, and some of

his hearers were scarce able to sit; yet they had crawled from their

bunks at the first experimental flourish, and found better than medicine

in the music. Some of the heaviest heads began to nod in time, and a

degree of animation looked from some of the palest eyes. Humanly

speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly,

than to write huge works upon recondite subjects. What could Mr. Darwin

have done for these sick women? But this fellow scraped away; and the

world was positively a better place for all who heard him. We have yet

to understand the economical value of these mere accomplishments. I

told the fiddler he was a happy man, carrying happiness about with him

in his fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to the fact.

"It is a privilege," I said. He thought a while upon the word, turning

it over in his Scots head, and then answered with conviction, "Yes, a

privilege."

That night I was summoned by "Merrily danced the Quaker's Wife" into the

companion of Steerage No. 4 and 5. This was, properly speaking, but a

strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern which swung to and

fro with the motion of the ship. Through the open slide-door we had a

glimpse of the grey night sea, with patches of phosphorescent foam

flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and the horizon rising and

falling as the vessel rolled to the wind. In the centre the companion

ladder plunged down sheerly like an open pit. Below, on the first

landing, and lighted by another lamp, lads and lasses danced, not more

than three at a time for lack of space, in jigs and reels, and

hornpipes. Above, on either side, there was a recess railed with iron,

perhaps two feet wide and four long, which stood for orchestra and seats

of honour. In the one balcony, five slatternly Irish lasses sat woven in

a comely group. In the other was posted Orpheus, his body, which was

convulsively in motion, forming an odd contrast to his somnolent,

imperturbable Scots face. His brother, a dark man with a vehement,

interested countenance, who made a god of the fiddler, sat by with open

mouth, drinking in the general admiration and throwing out remarks to

kindle it.

"That's a bonny hornpipe now," he would say; "it's a great favourite

with performers; they dance the sand dance to it." And he expounded the

sand dance. Then suddenly, it would be a long "Hush!" with uplifted

finger and glowing, supplicating eyes; "he's going to play 'Auld Robin

Gray' on one string!" And throughout this excruciating movement,--"On

one string, that's on one string!" he kept crying. I would have given

something myself that it had been on none; but the hearers were much