Chapter 51

THE EMIGRANTS

After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
head winds', till at last, after a three days' fog and rain, the sun
rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
were out of the weather emphatically called "Channel weather," and the
last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain sight, and
all the rest was broad ocean.

Land ho! was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the north.
At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway, thinking
America itself was at hand.

"Where is it?" cried one of them, running out a little way on the
bowsprit. "Is that it?"

"Aye, it doesn't look much like ould Ireland, does it?" said Jackson.

"Not a bit, honey:--and how long before we get there? to-night?"

Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants, when
they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their own
native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in a
steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.

They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have no
adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as a
place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to see
how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours together,
looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see New York
city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand miles
distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.

The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice--"Look, look, ye
divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!"

At last, the emigrants began to think, that the ship had played them
false; and that she was bound for the East Indies, or some other remote
place; and one night, Jackson set a report going among them, that Riga
purposed taking them to Barbary, and selling them all for slaves; but
though some of the old women almost believed it, and a great weeping
ensued among the children, yet the men knew better than to believe such
a ridiculous tale.

Of all the emigrants, my Italian boy Carlo, seemed most at his ease. He
would lie all day in a dreamy mood, sunning himself in the long boat,
and gazing out on the sea. At night, he would bring up