I sank back with a groan. I did not want to move, the father insisted, however, and, after many remonstrances, grasped my hand and raised me to my feet. He took me to where the resident priest lived, insisted on my washing myself and gave me, out of his bag, one of his clean shirts. Then we sat down to dinner, Fathers McGoran and Taschereau joining us. The conversation was of the deluge of emigrants, every day bringing new arrivals, and every ship with its quota of sick and dying. Every available place having become crowded, the ships had to remain and become floating hospitals. The calamity with which they were face to face was so unexpected and appalling that how to devise means to grapple with it staggered them. They spoke of the need of urging the government to erect sheds and send plenty of nurses and doctors. I listened in silence until Father Taschereau asked me for my opinion, as one who was an emigrant. I said many had died on the voyage and many more had been landed who would certainly die, but of this I was confident, there would not have been a death from fever or dysentery on the voyage or one sick of these diseases landed at Grosse isle, had there been enough to eat. The solution of the difficulty therefore seemed to me simple. Give all who arrive plenty of wholesome food. Starvation is the cause of dysentery and fever. Remove the cause and these diseases will disappear. It is not medicine and nursing that are wanted, but food. The people fled from starvation in Ireland to be worse starved on board ship where their lot was made worse by the lack of pure air and water, of which they had no lack in Ireland. They asked me many questions about the treatment of the emigrants on shipboard. Father McGoran said he was inclined to believe I was right, that Dr Douglas was making the mistake of fighting the fever instead of removing what caused the fever. The fever was not to be looked upon as was the cholera visitation of 12 years before. I left the table with Father Moylan and as we went out at the door, he stood for a minute to look at the sight on the river. The clouds had cleared and the sun had come out strong, with a marvellously soft and clear atmosphere. So far as we could see from where we stood, the blue waters of the river bore a column of vessels of which neither head nor end was visible. “Let us take a step over and see them,” said Father Moylan. When we reached the bank, the sight was striking, and would have been most inspiring had we not known that each of these noble ships was a floating pest-house. There was a shout from the vessel opposite us. A man stood on the gunwale, and steadying himself with one hand grasping the rigging, gesticulated with the other. His agitation was so great neither of us could make out what he was saying. “Speak slowly,” cried Father Moylan, when clear the response came across the water, “For the love of God, father, come aboord; ye’re needed.” There was only one rowboat in sight, and it belonged to Dr. Douglas. The oars were out of her and the chain locked. “You’ll have to send a boat,” cried the father. There was a long delay, ending in a boat putting off from the ship. He wanted me to go with him, but I said I wished to find my uncle.
With heavy heart and unsteady step I turned to the buildings where the sick were. The nighest was the best. I looked in and to my joy espied my cousin Bridget sitting alongside a bunk. She started and gave a cry of fright when she saw me, for, she explained, she thought I was in Quebec and I looked like a ghost. It was her father and her sister Ellen who were in the bed. The latter had been landed sick of the fever; uncle had been stricken by it the day after arrival. He did not know me, and I feared the worst from the sound of his moaning. The girl seemed to be doing well. “Comfortable they be,” said Bridget, “this is the best place; the sheds are bad as the ship.” I told her to go and take the air for a while, and sat down to watch in her place. I was hardly seated when I distinguished a murmur of plaintive cries from every part of the room, mostly—“Wather, if ye plaze.” I bestirred myself, and when the poor souls found there was somebody to help, requests increased, and I was kept going from bed to bed. When Bridget returned I remarked that I saw none of our ship’s people in the place. She said there was only room for her father and Ellen and the others were in the sheds. It was growing dark when Father Malloy came to the door and beckoned me out. He had such a distressed and wearied look that I went with him without asking any questions. When we came near the outhouse I had lodged in, I turned towards it. He gripped my arm. “No, Gerald, not there; you’d lapse into your old mood.” He took me to the priest’s house, and a shake-down was made for me in the kitchen. I had a wakeful night and went out of doors before sunrise. To my surprise I saw Father Malloy walking up and down in front of the house, prayer-book in hand. When done he joined me. “Now, Gerald, we have work to do; we must make an examination of everything, for no plan can be laid until we know the actual state of affairs.” Re-entering the house with him, he got a loaf and a jug of milk. “I am going to tell you something you should never forget; when you have to go where there are sick, do not go with an empty stomach. Fasting and infection go together.” Having broken our fast, we started, the first thing to be done, the father said, being to see what the island was like. The morning was delightfully fresh and we walked briskly. We found the island larger than we supposed, and having a good deal of land fit for cultivation. Pausing at a field where a man was harrowing, the father had a conversation with him in French. He told him the island was about three miles long by one in width, and that Doctor Douglas farmed a considerable part of it, keeping a number of cows. Standing on its north bank a wide expanse of the St Lawrence lay at our feet, the blue waters ruffled by a western breeze. Beyond rose a chain of wooded hills, which swelled into a lofty peak, overhanging the river. “That is called cape Tourmente,” said Father Malloy. “Is it not a glorious scene! Who, looking upon it, would dream there is concentrated within ten minutes’ walk the misery of a nation? Gerald, we must give Ireland’s woe on this island a voice that will bring the help of Christian people.”
“I am afraid it will be hard to interest them. Everything is against the poor emigrant, father. He is not looked upon as a human being. The very sailors treat him as they would a steer given to carry from one port to another.”
“True, my boy, and you don’t know it all, for you have not lived in this country yet. I’ve seen in New York men and women shrink from the newly landed emigrant as an unclean thing, and at Quebec over there the very bar-room loafers sniff their noses in disgust at him. Unless they have money nobody makes them welcome; and if they have money everybody tries to get it from them. I buried a woman who had been left to die on the wharf at Quebec. The captain bundled her out, nobody would touch her, let alone give her shelter, and the poor sick crathur afore sundown found rest and is now where those who despised her will have little chance of going.”
I asked Father Malloy about his visit to the ship the day before. He told me the man who shouted for him had a brother dying, who wanted the church’s last rites. “It was my first visit to a fever-stricken ship,” he went on to say, “and it was a revelation. I could not stand upright in her hold, for it was not much over 5 feet high, and there was little more elbow than head room. Every side was lined with berths and I saw dead lying in them with the living. The stench made one gasp, and the sight of the vermin crawling over dead and living made my flesh creep. An Irish priest is used to the sights of disease and want, but the emigrant-ship, fever-stricken, embodies every form of wretchedness and multiplies them a ten-fold.”
The quarantine-buildings are huddled together at the upper end of the island and each we examined during the day. Except the one in which uncle lay, they are flimsy affairs, a shelter from the heat of the sun and no more, for the boards are shrunken and the roofs leaky. In one the berths are in double tier, like those of a ship, the result being the patient in the lower berth is made uncomfortable by the one above, and he, in turn, from weakness, can neither get out nor into it without help, which he seldom gets. Every place is crowded with sick, even the two churches being occupied. The government had prepared for 200 sick; already there are nigh a thousand, and many more on the ships who cannot be landed for want of room. Without regard to age or sex they are huddled together in the sheds, and left to die or recover. The attendance was hardly worth speaking of. At long intervals a man or woman would come round with drink and food, but there was no pretence at coming for their comfort. We were told by many nobody had been near them for hours. We saw the dead lying next the living, for the bodies are removed only night and morning, and in many cases there were two and three in a berth. Over all this sad scene, from which hope had fled, shone the virtues of patience and submission to the divine will. No querulous word was heard, no grumbling; the stricken flock bowed beneath the rod of affliction with pious resignation. Workmen were busy building a new shed and there were tents lying round, but all the preparations were wofully insufficient. Father Malloy agreed with me that the lack of nurses was even worse than the lack of shelter, and thought a supply might be had from the healthy emigrants. I thought not; emigrants in health were too eager to escape after being bound to scenes of horror on shipboard for a month and more. We labored to do our best, and many a pail of water did the father carry from the river to serve out in cupfuls in the sheds.
The weather has been sorely against the sick, rain with high east winds, adding to their discomfort. Nearly every day there is a fresh arrival of a ship, and not one without sick on board. The wind had been from the east the day before and on the morning of the 25th a whole fleet was seen bearing up the river, of which a dozen had emigrants. At Father Malloy’s request I spent a day with him going from ship to ship, a boat having been lent him by a friendly captain. The passengers cried with joy when they saw him and clustered round the holy man, whose services in administering the last consolations of the church were needed at every step. I spoke with the passengers while he was below, and it was an unvarying tale of starvation on the voyage and cruel usage. I found the passengers on ships that had been lying at anchor over a week to be still starving, for the captains had not increased the rations and Dr Douglas said he could not supply provisions from the shore unless authorized by the Canadian government. One of the new arrivals had 13 dead on board. The 40 ships now at anchor, have nigh 15,000 emigrants: of these I am sure one-third would not be passed as healthy. Sailors are at work on shore erecting a sort of shelter with spars and sails, where the ships will leave their healthy to perform quarantine, while they go on to Quebec.
June 3.—Father Malloy has left with the design of making representations to the government about the condition of things here. He intended, if his bishop consented, to go direct to Montreal, and speak to the ministers themselves. The forwarding of emigrants passed as healthy has begun. They are crowded on to the steamers until there is barely room to move. The reason for this is, the passage money is a dollar a-head and the more packed on board, the more profit. Truth to tell, this class of emigrants are eager enough to leave, and get away from this place. The meanness of the Canadian government in dealing with them is shameful. Instead of allowing healthy passengers to go on with the ship as at first, they are now landed. Being compelled to land and stay here by the government’s orders, it would be reasonable to expect the government would provide for them. It does not; all it has done is to send an agent who offers to sell them provisions at cost. Uncle’s recovery is hopeless; his strength has gone.
5.—Poor uncle is dead. He was buried yesterday. Ellen keeps hovering between life and death; she has youth on her side. Poor Bridget is worn to a shadow, waiting on the sick. Being told a ship that came in this forenoon was from Sligo, I watched a chance to get on board, expecting to find some I knew among her passengers. I found her deck crowded with emigrants, watching the sailors fish up from the hold with boat-hooks the bodies of those who had died since entering the river. I soon learned there was bad blood between the crew and passengers, all of whom who could do so had left the steerage two days before and lived on deck. The hold had grown so loathsome with the warm weather that it became unbearable. The crew resented their living on deck. The captain stood at the poop rail, and proved to be a civil man. He told me he had done his best for the passengers on the voyage, but the charterers had poorly provisioned the vessel and he could not therefore give them the rations he wished. For the bad feeling between the sailors and passengers he could not blame either. Staying on deck the emigrants were in the sailors’ way, yet he could not order them back to the hold. Three sailors had caught the fever during the week, which incensed their comrades against the emigrants. He was to pay the sailors a sovereign for each body brought up. I told him of Captain Christian of the ship Sisters, who, the week before, when emigrants and sailors refused for any money to go into the hold to bring up the dead, went down himself and carried them to the deck on his shoulders. I hope he may live to know that Irishmen are grateful, for he is now down with the fever. I recognized none of the passengers, for they were from the northwest end of Lord Palmerston’s estates. Their poverty was extreme. They had no luggage and many had not rags enough to cover their nakedness. So haggard and white were they, so vacant their expression, that they looked more like an array of spectres, than of human beings. Coming back, I had painful evidence of the brutal indifference of the authorities in dealing with the sick. They continue to be brought from the ships to the quay in rowboats, and the line of ships being now two miles long, the journey is a long one, and often fatal in bad weather. A small steamboat for transferring them would be a godsend, but the government does not get one, does not even spend ten shillings to replace the broken planks of the steps on the quay, although the want of them causes many a feeble one to slip into the river.