Emigrant

“ Emigrants, being for the most part drawn from among dry-land-living populations, are apt to be daunted by the idea of a long voyage. People would be more ready, perhaps, to contemplate becoming colonists, were it not for that dreaded crossing of the sea which must necessarily be their first step. Their terrors may be natural enough, but they are more fanciful than real; and once overcome, the emigrant smiles at his former self. ”

“ Ourselves children of the Pilgrims of a former generation, let us not turn from the Pilgrims of the present. Let the home founded by our emigrant fathers continue open in its many mansions to the emigrants of to-day.
The history of our country, in its humblest as well as most exalted spheres, testifies to the merit of foreigners. Their strong arms have helped furrow our broad territory with canals, and stretch in every direction the iron rail. They fill our workshops, navigate our ships, and even till our fields. ”

“ A thousand circumstances, all unlooked for, will seize upon the feelings of the emigrant; the harshness of strangers, the cold regard of recent acquaintance, the absence of relatives and of friends long cherished, the distance which separates him from his native home, and the dreary time which must elapse between all communications of the pen. ”

“ Any good anecdotes from the age of five to fifteen, good latitude and longitude, will suit me; and if you can tell me any pleasing misfortunes of emigrants, so much the better. I have a great desire to draw a picture of an anti-Mademoiselle Panache, a well-informed, well-bred French governess, an emigrant. ”

“ A squad of emigrants, just landed on the wharf and waiting to be transferred to the emigrant-train for another week's voyage by land to the ends of the continent, is one of the most pathetic sights in this world, especially if they are foreign to our speech and dress and modes of life. ”

“ The emigrant views emigration simply as the means of improving his own condition; the public are supposed to take a wider and more philosophical view of the subject—but I fear the public view is rather hazy and indistinct ”

“ She was on her way to the great western world, and on her deck stood many pale-faced emigrants, whom the mild pleasant day had brought up from their close dark berths, and who cast mournful looks in the direction of the land they had left a thousand miles behind them. ”

“ Emigration, however necessary as the obvious means of providing for the increasing population of early-settled and over-peopled countries, is indeed a very serious matter to the individual emigrant and his family. ”

“ Having seen the emigrants bid adieu to the Old World, in the flurry of grief, hope, and excitement, I was curious to see what difference a five- weeks' voyage would have produced in them, and in what condition they would land upon the shores of America. In a city where emigrants land at the rate of a thousand a-day, I was not long of finding an opportunity. I witnessed the debarkation upon the shore of the New World of between 600 and 700 English emigrants, who had just arrived from Liverpool. ”

“ It is being done in or colonies; but an emigrant's life, my Hester, would scarcely assist your perfectible theories. Every moment is employed in drudgery of some kind. A large proportion of the emigrants die of hardship. ”

“ This cannot be said of the emigrant from England to America and our own or other colonies. An English emigrant, on account of his open conduct, straightforward character, and industry, has been always respected. ”

“ Our preface pledges us to a true account of an emigrant's course: the varying details which we have inflicted on the reader, must be excused in this conscientious fulfilment of our profession. The foregoing is indeed nothing but what every emigrant must make up his mind to endure (unless he goes out as a cabin passenger,) e'er he reach El Dorado and fortune. Some high flown descriptions make the voyage appear more like a pleasure trip in my lord's yacht ”

“ We fare very well, considering all things, on board the Strathfieldsaye, but the steerage of an emigrant ship is of necessity a most miserably uncomfortable place to me. I am more solitary and companionless than I ever was in all my life in this stagnant crowd of human beings. ”

“ Emigration has, also, a singular effect in developing the latent powers of the emigrant, and the children of emigrants are usually more active, more energetic than the children of the older inhabitants of the country among whom they settle. ”

“ The kid visits the emigration offices and emigrant ships until he falls in with a likely flat. They get into conversation over a friendly glass. The emigrant makes no secret of his destination. The kid becomes very communicative, tells the story of his life, and shows his money, of which he seems to have an abundance. ”

“ Now I hold as a personal belief that we are all exceptions, that we take our stand before God as tender human creatures of His, each unique in itself. The emigrant on the boat has the delicious feelings of convalescence, of getting to be himself again. ”

“ We might similarly conceive the migrating (destined, when they reach the sea, to become the emigrating) races as forming a continuous emigrating chain or cable, unbroken from the departure of the first migratory band to the sailing of the last emigrant ship, splitting on this side and that into independent strands, but each containing the ferment of the movement that has carried civilization round the globe. ”

“ It is an object of no small importance for the emigrant—more especially if he have a large family—to embark in a good ship; and this may be accomplished without difficulty, more especially as, at the present moment, so many vessels are continually sailing for the colonies. ”

“ They say that the emigrants, as they land here, are often simple-hearted people, willing to work, accustomed to early hours and plain living, decorous and respectful in their manners. It would seem as if aristocratic drilling had done them good. ”

“ They look as if no existing power could bring order out of such a chaos. In this crowd, on the shores of a strange land, the emigrants found themselves. Many were deplorably emaciated, others looked vacant and stupified. ”

“ Here and there among them, to be sure, were pink-skinned boys as fresh and sweet as the apple-blossoms under which they rode their horses, but for the most part the emigrants were dissipated, disenchanted, clinging loyally to the traditions of the older country that had discarded them, and scorning the fragrant and inexhaustible richness of the new land that had made them welcome. ”

“ In early days our increase used to be made up, in a great measure, by emigrants from foreign nations. The past few years our emigration has attained to some three or four thousand, annually, from the various countries in which missions are established, while it has increased many times that number from the great and glorious presence of God our Father, who sends the spirits to this world to dwell. ”

“ As the fatal day drew near, the emigrants, sixteen thousand all told, men, women, and children, might be seen hurrying from different parts of England to the coast, some riding, the majority trudging, sullen and weary, along the muddy roads, the men with their scanty luggage slung over their shoulders, the women with their babes in their arms. ”

“ I would not recommend emigrants to carry out with them overseers, or indentured servants of any description, as I have never yet seen, nor heard of, such engagements terminating satisfactorily: on the contrary, they have invariably proved a source of great annoyance, expense, and inconvenience. The emigrant can be at no loss for servants in the colony, either free or assigned ”

“ The immigration problem, which I have been discussing in previous numbers of The Arena, cannot be unravelled without considering one important thread which adds to the entanglement. I shall apply to it the term "Inter-migration," a word not found in the dictionary, because it is freshly coined for the purpose. Let me try to define its meaning.
A person is said to migrate when he leaves his native land, seeking a new home in some other country. Around the word emigrant or immigrant hovers always the idea of an exchange of habits, customs, and language of one country with those of another. ”

“ The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?—But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so. ”

“ The emigration of 1792 was composed of only one class of individuals, who had no other profession than that of arms; the emigration of 1685 comprised all the constituent elements of a people—merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, labourers. Moreover, the refugees founded numerous and useful establishments, of which many yet still remain, while the later emigrants have nowhere left enduring traces of their passage. ”

“ Splendid emigrants are these brave, determined fellows—emigrants who benefit not only themselves, but the lands to which they go, and who never, as they climb the rungs of Fortune’s ladder, and build up new homes and new associations in the{243} land of their adoption, forget the dear old home, or those less fortunate companions who still remain there. ”

“ As we know, from a long experience, that the passengers of emigrant ships, with a very few exceptions, are in the habit of claiming more than they are entitled to, we are far from putting implicit faith in all their statements. ”

“ We welcome emigrants from the civilized Christian nations of Europe to our land, in which we have a just pride, and on which, we may truly say,, have the gifts of nature been most prodigally lavished. ”

“ If, in eighteen days, 800 emigrants had taken their departure, the number in a year must amount, it may be presumed, to some thousands. But this is only the beginning: emigration, we know, increases in a geometrical ratio. ”

“ If these families come, many others will come after them, and thus spontaneous emigration will be developed for our country. In the disposition with which they are now proposing to emigrate, it is natural that they should flow into the same place, and the country which has the happiness to receive well the first emigrants will receive all. ”

“ But the classes who can hardly imagine the pleasant feelings which emigration provides for the well-disposed pauper, have pleasant feelings of their own when they emigrate, which are perhaps more lively in proportion to the greater susceptibility of a more cultivated mind to the sensations of mental pain and pleasure. Emigrants of cultivated mind, from the moment when they determine to be colonists, have their dreams, which, though far from being always, or ever fully realised, are, I have been told by hundreds of this class, very delightful indeed. ”

“ England, therefore, encourages emigration; means are notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, from public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United States, receive the many thousands of her subjects thus ejected from the bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. ”

“ A strong desire to seek his future weal,
In emigration to that distant shore
Where flow great rivers, and loud cataracts roar;
Where mighty lakes afford the fullest scope
For future commerce, and the settler's hope.
Go with him to his home in the wild woods—
That rude log cottage where he stored his goods;
Paint faithfully the scenes through which he passed,
And how he settled in a town at last;
What then befel him in successive years,
Or aught which to thee suitable appears,
To make his history such as may be read
By high-born race, or those more lowly bred. ”

“ The emigration from the East naturally follows, by its several routes, overland and by sea—giving opportunity to present vivid pictures of conditions that are past never to return. The circumstances which the emigrants found, or made, when they reached the El Dorado, are next in logical order, and are portrayed to a large extent in lively anecdote. ”

“ The emigrants lean over the rail, and gaze wistfully at us. Ah, how many thousands of miles they must travel ere they reach their new home! Strange and pitiful it is to think that so few of them will ever see the old home again; and yet there is something bright and hopeful in the spectacle, if we think not of individuals, but of the world's future. ”

“ A band of emigrants, of adventurers, and constituted, as I think all emigrants are, of two great classes—the one who, lacking neither ability nor courage, are filled with an ambition, characteristic particularly of the British race, to raise their status in the world, who find the conditions of their native environment too arduous, the competition too keen, to offer them much prospect, and who seek a new and more rapidly developing country elsewhere ”

“ Emigration.—The movement of emigration may be divided into two currents, temporary and permanent—the former going chiefly towards neighbouring European countries and to North Africa, and consisting of manual labourers, the latter towards trans-oceanic countries, principally Brazil, Argentina and the United States. These emigrants remain abroad for several years, even when they do not definitively establish themselves there. ”

“ They are bringing over hundreds of emigrants every year and landing them right on those docks. These people have had to cross the ocean to reach that point, but our ancestors made the voyage for you and me two hundred years ago. ”

“ And, what is still worse, the sufferings of the emigrants seem destined to last for ever. The experience of one does not help the other, for the emigrants, after their arrival in America, disperse into all parts of the great continent. ”

“ But alas! that which generally characterises the young settlement, let it be young as it may—that which would so wofully disappoint our pastoral and romantic emigrant, is precisely this: that, instead of leaving care behind them, the care to get rich, to get on, as it is disgustingly called—our colonists take a double portion of this commodity with them. Comparatively few seem to emigrate simply to live then and there more happily. They take land, as they would take a shop, to get a profit and be rich. ”