[Illustration: NEW YORK BAY, LOOKING ACROSS TO STATEN ISLAND.]
Dickens drew his picture from life, and although an extreme case, there are many Mark Tapleys yet to be met. And indeed, unless the emigrant can remain happy and jovial amid the unmistakable hardships of even the best regulated steerage, he had better have stopped at home. If he can stand them well, he is of the stuff that will make a good colonist or settler, ready to "rough it" at any time. Before leaving the subject of steerage passengers and emigrants, it may be well to note that the United States Government does all in its power on their arrival in New York to protect them from imposition and furnish them with trustworthy information. At the depôt at Castle Gardens, where third-class passengers land, there are interpreters, money-changers, railway-ticket offices, and rooms for their accommodation; and it is very much their own fault if they slide into the pitfalls of New York--for New York _has_ pitfalls, like every other great city.
The risks of the voyage across the Atlantic are not really as great as those of ships passing southwards through the Bay of Biscay, which is the terror of passengers to Australia, India, China, and other points in the Orient. At the beginning of 1880 the fine S.S. _Chimborazo_ returned with difficulty to Plymouth, three persons having been washed overboard, and one killed from injuries received on board. Off Ushant a formidable gale arose, and the vessel began to roll heavily, while on the following morning the storm had become a hurricane, and the water was taken on board and below in volumes, threatening a fate similar to that experienced by the _London_. Just before 9 A.M. an enormous sea broke over the ship, heeling her over and washing the deck with resistless force. The steam launch, six heavy boats, the smoking room, saloon companion, and everything on the spar deck, were in three seconds carried overboard among the breakers as though they were mere children's toys, while, in addition to the losses of life already mentioned, seventeen other passengers were more or less injured. Just before the ship was struck the smoking-room was full of passengers, who were requested by the captain to leave it to give place to some helpless sheep who were floundering about, and to this fact they owed their lives. "As," said a leading journal, "the stricken ship entered Plymouth Harbour on Tuesday morning, her shattered stanchions and skylights, her damaged steering apparatus, and the heap of wreckage lying upon her deck, proclaimed the fury of the tremendous ordeal through which she had passed, and awakened many a heartfelt and silent prayer of gratitude among her rescued passengers, as they contemplated the evidences of the peril from which they had so narrowly escaped." It is in moments such as these that the poverty of human words is keenly felt. There can be no doubt that, but for the excellent seamanship displayed by Captain Trench and his officers there would have been a sadder story to relate.