Chapter 58

THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND

Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is
not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty,
seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in
the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so
great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from
America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the
prevalence of westerly winds.

We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were
visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of
a week.

During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
appearance on deck, during the entire passage.

During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the
lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue
to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning,
when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and
also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at
the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and
ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to
windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.

During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the
steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.

Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the