CHAPTER III. ONCE more on board of the Michigan, one of the best vessels on Lake Erie; as usual, full of emigrants, chiefly Irish. It is impossible not to feel compassion for these poor people, wearied as they are with confinement and suffering, and yet they do compose occasionally about as laughable a group as can well be conceived. In the first place, they bring out with them from Ireland articles which no other people would consider worth the carriage. I saw one Irish woman who had five old tin tea-pots; there was but one spout among the whole, and I believe not one bottom really sound and good. And then their costumes, more particularly the fitting out of the children, who are not troubled with any extra supply of clothes at any time! I have witnessed the seat of an old pair of corduroy trowsers trans haired girl. But what amused me more was the very reverse of this arrangement: a boy's father had just put a patch upon the hinder part of his son's trowsers, and cloth not being at hand, he had, as an expedient for stopping the gap, inserted a piece of an old straw bonnet; in so doing he had not taken the precaution to put the smooth side of the plait inwards, and, in consequence, young Teddy when he first sat down felt rather uncomfortable. "What's the matter wid ye, Teddy; what makes ye wriggle about in that way? Sit aisy, man; sure enough, havn't ye a straw-bottomed chair to sit down upon all the rest of your journey, which is more than your father ever had before you ?" And then their turning in for the night! A single bed will contain one adult and four little ones at one end, and another adult and two half-grown at the other. But they are all packed away so snug and close, and not one venturing to move, there appears to be room for all. CHAPTER III. ONCE more on board of the Michigan, one of the best vessels on Lake Erie; as usual, full of emigrants, chiefly Irish. It is impossible not to feel compassion for these poor people, wearied as they are with confinement and suffering, and yet they do compose occasionally about as laughable a group as can well be conceived. In the first place, they bring out with them from Ireland articles which no other people would consider worth the carriage. I saw one Irish woman who had five old tin tea-pots; there was but one spout among the whole, and I believe not one bottom really sound and good. And then their costumes, more particularly the fitting out of the children, who are not troubled with any extra supply of clothes at any time! I have witnessed the seat of an old pair of corduroy trowsers trans haired girl. But what amused me more was the very reverse of this arrangement: a boy's father had just put a patch upon the hinder part of his son's trowsers, and cloth not being at hand, he had, as an expedient for stopping the gap, inserted a piece of an old straw bonnet; in so doing he had not taken the precaution to put the smooth side of the plait inwards, and, in consequence, young Teddy when he first sat down felt rather uncomfortable. "What's the matter wid ye, Teddy; what makes ye wriggle about in that way? Sit aisy, man; sure enough, havn't ye a straw-bottomed chair to sit down upon all the rest of your journey, which is more than your father ever had before you ?" And then their turning in for the night! A single bed will contain one adult and four little ones at one end, and another adult and two half-grown at the other. But they are all packed away so snug and close, and not one venturing to move, there appears to be room for all. to take in wood, and then started for Green Bay, in the Wisconsin territory. Green Bay is a military station; it is a pretty little place, with soil as rich as garden mould. The Fox river debouches here, but the navigation is checked a few miles above the town by the rapids, which have been dammed up into a water-power; yet there is no doubt that as soon as the whole of the Wisconsin lands are offered for sale by the American Government, the river will be made navigable up to its meeting with the Wisconsin, which falls into the Mississippi. There is only a portageof a mile and a half between the two, through which a canal will be cut, and then there will be another junction between the lakes and the Far West. It was my original intention to have taken the usual route by Chicago and Galena to St. Louis, but I fell in with Major F, with whom I had been previously acquainted, who informed me that he was about |