EMIGRATION: "I was called on deck to smell the land -- and truly the change was very sensible ... It was the breath of youth and hope and love." -- Diary of Mary GAPPER. Regarding immigration to Quebec in 1847: "I spent a considerable part of the day watching a shark that followed in our wake with great constancy .. the mate said it was a certain forerunner of death." -- Robert WHYTE, "The Ocean Plague, or A Voyage to Quebec in an Irish Emigrant Vessel, Embracing a Quarantine at Grosse Isle in 1847, with notes Illustrative of the Ship Pestilence of that Fatal Year," pub. Boston 1848, copy in Library of Congress. "... If any class deserves to be protected and assisted by the government, it is that class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare means of subsistence ... The law is bound, at least on the English side ... to put an end to that system by which a firm of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the whole 'tween decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched people as they can get hold of on any terms they can get, without the smallest reference to the convenience of the steerage..or anything but their own immediate profit -- Author Charles DICKENS, "American Notes." "You have stated that, after getting to sea, the two privies on deck were destroyed?" "Yes ... they were only put up temporarily ... the day before she sailed ..." "And that there were none below?" "Yes. None below." "What was the remedy?" "There was no remedy ...." "In consequence of that there was a very bad smell below?" "You could not stand below." -- Testimony of Mr. Delany FINCH, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on Emigrant Ships," 1854. "New York is a very brilliant city. To give the best idea of it I should describe it as something of a fusion between Liverpool and Paris -- crowded quays, long perspectives of vessels and masts, bustling streets, gay shops, tall white houses, and a clear brilliant sky overhead." -- Earl of Carlisle, "Travels in America." If a family could raise only enough money for one passage, the ticket would be bought in the name of the eldest son or daughter. When that son or daughter arrived in America and got a job, money would be sent back to Ireland to help the family pay the rent and eventually to buy another passage ticket for a younger brother or sister. This remittance system of "one bringing another" was to become so firmly rooted on both sides of the Atlantic that sister would follow brother, and brother sister, until the children of an entire family were reunited in America. As the "Cork Examiner," 22 June 1871 revealed, the emigrant's "chain" or link to Ireland does not draw him back despite the peculiar strength of Irish relationships, "but pulls forward those he has left behind." -- Excerpt, "Paddy's Lament, Ireland 1846-47," Thomas & Michael GALLAGHER (1982) "All during my life people kept going to America and there's not a family in this parish but has somebody living in the States. There was always a big night for anybody going away. Neily McCOLGAN, the blind fiddler, would be sent for, and they would dance till day-clearing. Then, too, for anybody coming home there was always a bottle-drink; but these led to so much drinking that Fr. FOX put down the bottle drinks entirely ... Times at home were bad, and they all left home with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The old people said that good health and the grace of God were fortunes enough for any young man or woman." -- Charles McGLINCHY, "The Last of the Name." ".... It was just like a big funeral ... and the last parting ... was indeed sad to see ... The parents especially were so sad, as if the person leaving were really dead ... You would rather not be there at all if you would be any way soft yourself." Manuscript 1411, Irish Folklore Department, University College, Dublin. The Irishman's love of his homeland and of the Irish way of life, despite the hardships imposed by the misbegotten union with Britain in 1800, had always, until the famine, limited emigration. The peasant's desperate hold upon his land, his passion for survival at home, his love of the Gaelic language, and his fear of puritan America's hostility to Catholicism had created a kind of psychological moat confining him to Ireland. But emigration had been used in the past as a remedy for hard times by adventurous Irishmen whose imagination had been fired by stories of America, by letters from emigrants who rode their own horses and spoke of being so far west in America that they had to crouch to let the sun go down. Per letter that appeared in the "Tipperary Vindicator" 5 Jan 1848 -- "I wish to heaven all our countrymen were here," wrote one such emigrant from the Chicago area. "... The labourer can earn as much in one day as will support him for a week. The richest land in the world may be purchased here or in Wisconsin for $1.25 an acre - equal to 5s 3d sterling - pure alluvial soil, for 30 feet of surface ... If I could show them the splendid prairie I am looking on, extending in wild luxuriant verdure far as the eye can reach -- virgin soil that will stand the wear and tear of ages without requiring a shovel full of manure -- how different would their situation be from what it is! How gladly they would fly with their families." -- Excerpt, "Through Irish Eyes," Smithmark Publishers (1998).