The past generation, consisting of four sisters,
was a band of staid sensible domestic
home-keeping English matrons, strong and grave in
character, with no perceptible tinge of
Bohemianism. They dwelt inland, too, with
husbands permanently localised in their own
districts, who had no more experience of emigration
than the Vicar of Wakefield had. My own
father inhabited the same house for more than
fifty years; and all the travelling he ever did
was on the map, to which he was wont to
refer instantly upon the mention of any place, at
home or abroad. Still, at our fireside, there
were narrated exciting traditions of the wanderings
of our mother's family. How her uncle
had lived for years with a Red Indian tribe, in
the backwoods of America; and how he had
become a bonâ fide chief, with an unpronounceable
name, by marrying an Indian chief's daughter,
who had given to us a race of red cousins. How
her step-brother, who had never done any good
in England, and had left it with scarcely a
shilling, was growing wealthy and important in
South Australia. And how her ancestors—for
she had ancestors—were ever foremost in
expeditions of religion, enterprise, discovery, or gain,
that would take them away to foreign shores. As
children we sat round our nursery-fire and
discussed the subject of emigration. I recollect
how our eldest sister, who took after her father,
and remains to this day immovable in the house
where she was born, combated our plans
decisively, and finished a singularly fluent speech
—for her—with the Irish argument, "If Providence
had intended you to emigrate to America,
you would have been born there." Nevertheless,
over Australia, in Port Natal, in India, in
Canada, in California, and in New Zealand, our
emigrant race is scattered.

Going from my home among a group of mountains
in ancient Siluria, where not a murmur of
the existence of an ocean lingers in the deep
valleys, though the ripple-marks of its primeval
tides and the fossils of its earliest inhabitants
are perpetuated in the rocks—going thence, for
the second time in my life, to the sea-shore, and
to the great populous port of Liverpool—I am
fascinated by everything that betokens the
immediate vicinity of the sea; the dress of the naval
officers; the hardy, weather-beaten faces of the
seamen; the maritime talk of the children, who
chatter familiarly of the tide, and the shore, and
the ships, as our children prattle of bird-nesting
and mushroom-hunting; above all, the thousands
of masts, with their appendant shrouds
and tackling, which stretch in clear lines
against the sky, like colossal geometrical
cobwebs, in whose meshes my eyes and thoughts
are caught and detained by an irresistible
charm.

The friend I am visiting has a brother, who
is doctor of a ship; and he spins yarns to me,
in which he unites a sailor's vivid fluency with
the close and correct observation of an educated
man. His talk is of voyages amid dense
fogbanks, and fantastic icebergs; of threatened
wrecks; of deeds of devotion and daring; of
marvellous escapes. So, when the doctor
invites me to spend some hours on board his ship
the day before she sails, when the emigrants
embark, I accept the invitation eagerly. My
friend, who regards me as a country cousin,
utterly incapable of steering a clear course
through the bewilderments of Liverpool,
conducts me to the landing-stage; and plants me
at one end with instructions not to move until
I see the steam-tug, the Sea King, which is
plying between the shore, and the vessel lying
out in the river, with the Blue-Peter floating
from her mast-head.

Receiving my orders with humility, I watch
him carefully out of sight, and instantly quit
my post, and wander among the groups, which
already occupy the floating stage; from whom
I ask rural questions, in defiance of my
instructions. Seeing a steam-tug lying outside
two other boats, with quite a different funnel
to the one my friend directed me to look for, I
inquire from a very marine-looking man what
it is, and receive the answer "The Favourite,
waiting on the ship yonder." He points to
my emigrant vessel; I dart across the two boats;
the Favourite's steam is getting up; the captain,
with his feet planted firmly on his paddle-box,
looks down upon me with the air of a despotic
monarch; and I forget my instructions
altogether.

"Are you going to the Australian ship in the
river?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Will you take me? I am a friend of the
doctor's, and I'm to meet him there."

"Doctor's not gone aboard yet. Besides, if
you ain't a passenger, my orders are not to take
friends. Lumbering the ship with friends! You
can't go."

I stand passively and despairingly watching
the paddle-wheel make its first revolution, when
a friendly seaman, who has just withdrawn the
gangway, winks graciously at me, and bids me
jump. I jump, under the awful eye of the
despotic captain, and he takes no more notice
of me than if I had become suddenly invisible.
He has done his duty.

The ship: I have never been on board a ship
before, but my hereditary instincts make me
feel instantly at home. I measure it with my
eye, as an architect might shrewdly scrutinise a
building erected by some other architect. I
know that this place is to be the abode of three
hundred people, for upwards of two months;
and to me it looks no larger in proportion than
the toy we used to freight with pebbles, and
man with dolls, and float upon our mountain
tarn, with a string six yards long to convey it
safety across. " Three hundred passengers," I
exclaim, mentally, "there will not be room for
them to stir!" But, referring to the Ships
Passengers Act, I find that every emigrant
ship passing within the tropics, must have a
space of fifteen clear superficial feet upon the
main deck, or on the deck immediately below,
unencumbered with luggage or lading, for every
passenger above fourteen years of age. I read,