6.—Dr Douglas exemplifies how a man may be estimable as an individual yet unequal for his duties as an official. He is so obliging and gracious personally that it is unpleasant to find fault with him, yet it is apparent he does not grasp the magnitude of the affliction he has to deal with and is unable to devise means to meet it. All the steps taken are ridiculous in their petty nature. I have been told that it is not him but the Canadian government that is to blame, that it will not allow him a free hand in meeting the emergency, does not respond to his calls, and warns him to be careful in incurring expenditure. Probably that is true, but the government is not accountable for the foolish rules by which the island is governed. There is now a large colony of supposed healthy emigrants confined to the northwest corner of the island. When one falls sick, instead of being taken to the fever-sheds, he is conveyed to the ship in which he was a passenger, and from her is taken to the sheds. The delay and the fatigue of the journey by land and water, if it does not kill the patient makes his recovery more doubtful. Although the population of the island has doubled in a few weeks, the boat with supplies from Quebec continues to come once a week only. We may be starving, many are starving this day, yet until the steamer comes there is no help. The dead are being buried in trenches, three tier deep. Men and women whose strong arms would add to Canada’s wealth are being held here by its authorities to die of want when within sight of plenty. I look at the row of farm-houses on the opposite bank of the river, on the little town whose roofs I see, and knowing there is comfort and plenty over there, marvel at the stupidity, the criminal disregard, that leaves us without bread to eat or even straw to die upon. Steamers pass daily but they are not allowed to stop at the island; my poor people are kept prisoners to perish amid the rocks of this island. The Almighty will surely have a day of reckoning with the rulers of Canada, for it is Canada’s territory we are on and it is Canada’s quarantine in which we lie bound. The sick are everywhere and are neglected. I found the body of a man in a thicket where he had crawled like a scared beast to die in peace. Bodies are taken from the tents daily where the healthy are supposed to lodge. The sheds have become repugnant to every sense, and the sick are worse off than on ship, for few have relatives to attend them, and they lie for hours without being helped even to a drink of water. The inmates of a tent told me nobody had been near them for two days, and not one among them able to stand for a minute. Everything is against us, for the weather is windy and wet. I go to spend the night in the old shed. My brain is overburdened with the sorrows of my people, and I would I were at rest with Aileen.
10.—A steamer came in this morning to take away emigrants, and I am sure over a thousand were packed on board. Her purser brought a package of letters; one of them was for myself.
Montreal, June 8, 1847.
My Dear Gerald,—I had it in mind to have written you several days ago, but postponed taking pen in hand day after day in expectation of being able to convey to you the intelligence that would cheer your heart—that the government had decided on adopting a policy of adequate relief. That, it grieves me to say, they have not done, although I have exerted myself to arouse them to a sense of their duty, but it is little a poor priest can do with our public men. When I reached here I went first to see the premier. After waiting my turn for an hour with a crowd of visitors, I was admitted. He was civil, but is a dull man, and did not seem to realize what I was telling him. He told me to go to the provincial secretary, to whose department emigration belongs, and see him. I left in no good humor, to do as Mr Sherwood bade me. Mr Daly was not at his lodgings; he had gone to the back of the mountain to dine. I have learned since, he is better at dining and wining than attending to his duties. I had an interview with him next day. You may not know that Mr Daly is of ourselves. He is a Galway man himself and his lady is from Kilkenny. Appealing to an Irishman and a Catholic I expected him to fall in with me—that all I had to do, was to seize him of the actual facts of the situation at Grosse isle and he would act with energy. That was what I expected of him but all I got from him, Gerald, was soft words and promises, and neither the one nor the other will feed the starving or cure the sick. He told me to call next day, as he wanted time to go over the reports. When I went, his servant man said he was out, and I never found him in again for me. When the house opened, I managed to get in, to hear what the governor would say about the emigrants. The words put in his mouth about them made me angry. The government pretended they had made ample preparation for the expected influx and that everything was going on well. Beside him stood two men smiling among a bevy of ladies who knew better, for I had told them all. In the debate since then, when a member on the opposition side referred to the rumors of the state of matters at quarantine, Mr Daly begged the house not to give heed to alarmist reports and to rest assured the government was doing everything that was required, had appointed a commission of three doctors to visit Grosse isle, and would act on their report. I had little respect before for Canadian politicians, I have less now. I was advised to wait on the new minister, John A. Macdonald, the youngest member of the government. I told my friend that if Mr Daly would not do the decent thing by his countrymen, I was not going to ask the member for the Orange city of Kingston, who, like all the others of them, is engrossed in intrigues to keep his party in office. The talk of the city is whether the ministry will stand, for its majority is only one or two, and there is a good deal of excitement about it. More attention is being paid to the ribaldry of The Pilot than anything else. This will not be for long. The evil has come to the door of this city. The forwarding by wholesale of all emigrants able to move, has brought the fever. The emigration sheds are at Windmill point, an inconvenient place, for there is not water enough to permit the steamers to come up to the wharf, and the emigrants have to be landed by scows, which is sore on the sick. I am not going to say that the journey from Grosse isle to here is as bad as the voyage across the Atlantic, but it has a few features worse than it. The steamers come in with emigrants packed on their lower deck like herrings in a fish-box. The steamers are chartered by the government from their supporters, and a few of them are old, worn-out tubs, that take two days to a trip that ought to be made inside 20 hours. Without food or cover, blistered by the sun in the day and chilled by the river breezes at night, the poor creatures are landed here more dead than alive. Many who went aboard feeling well, are carried off in a dying state. My curse and the curse of every Irishman be on the government that allows the helplessness of our countrymen to be traded upon to make money for their followers. If their transportation was left open to all ship-owners, the emigrants would be brought here in large and speedy steamers, and a limit could be put to the number they carry. Once landed, the emigrants are decently treated. I am thankful to be able to say that. It is the city and not the government that manages. For sick and well there is plenty of wholesome food, and no lack of doctors or nurses. The food, to be sure, is coarse and the cooking not good, but you know the saying, The poor drink wather and the rich sip tay. After Grosse isle it is fine. What I have seen here has shown me the necessity of moving the quarantine to the flats below Quebec. If the sick were moved from Grosse isle to near the city they would get all the supplies and service needed. I expect to return to Quebec in a day or so, and before leaving here hope to get the bishop to wait on the premier, to ask that the new fever sheds be placed on the outskirts of Quebec. I hear from the emigrants as they arrive of you, and as they speak they bless you. I hope to see you soon.
Your Old Preceptor.
12.—A ship that came in from Sligo has many of my old neighbors. They say after we left, the agents gave out that all who refused to emigrate would have the relief taken from them, which was all they had to keep life in them until next crop. The more that went, the more eager were those left behind to go. At the rate they are coming, Lord Palmerston will have his land clear of people by Michaelmas, and be able to lease it to Scotch cow-feeders. Most of the emigrants come expecting free land from the Canadian government and a pound a-head from the agents of their landlords at Quebec. Oh, the deceivers, to cheat these poor people with lies!
16.—Bridget is down with the fever, just when Ellen was recovering and likely to be able soon to leave with her sister for uncle’s farm in Huntingdon. It seems as if exposure, if long enough continued, is sure to induce the disease. Doctor Douglas says few can withstand breathing the air of the sheds for a fortnight without being laid down. I expect my turn will come yet. A company of soldiers has arrived to act as a guard over the camp of what is called the healthy emigrants to keep them from going near the fever sheds. It is of a piece with everything else. The fever is in the camp as well as in the sheds. Had they sent a few hundred boards from Quebec to floor the tents, it would have been more sensible than to supply a guard. The weather is still wet, and the ground under the tents is soaking, yet the people have nowhere else to lie. I was telling the head of the Church of England clergymen, Doctor Mountain, of what my friend had said about quarantine being moved near the city. He agreed it ought to be done, although the people of Quebec would resist. The cellar of the marine hospital having become full to overflowing with emigrants, workmen came three days ago to erect sheds on the hospital grounds. The people of St Rochs assembled, scattered the lumber, and drove away the workmen. Lamenting the lack of nurses, he told me it was partly due to the government’s not offering sufficient wages. Placards on the Quebec streets asking for nurses at 60 cents a day met with no response. Doctors were offered only $3.50 a day. A dollar a day for nurses and $5 for doctors would get a supply, but the authorities would not consent. I can believe anything of them. They will not send us a supply of straw, even, and many of the sick are lying without anything below them.
18.—I was witness today of an incident I want to preserve some note of. I was attending to an old neighbor, Mr Monaghan, who came in the ship from Sligo six days ago. He is mending, though still poorly. While bending over him, he gave a start, and turning I saw they were carrying in a new patient. They placed him in an adjoining bed. Wasted and sallow as he was, I recognized in him a man I had seen from boyhood, but had never spoken to. He had a farm in our townland and was a bitter Orangeman. With Monaghan he had a feud, which they tried to fight out on many a market day. Stanhope had led a party that beat his oldest son and four other boys nigh to death one St John’s eve, and had heaped insult on him and his times without count. I will not say Monaghan did not pay him back. If he did not, somebody else did, for he had his stackyard twice burned and one fine morning found four of his cows houghed. How would these mortal enemies meet now, far from their native land and laid side by side in deathly sickness? Stanhope was overcome with the fatigue of bringing him from the ship, and lay exhausted with his eyes shut. I held up his head to give him some cordial, and then he sank back and fell asleep. I kept my eye on him as I went about the shed, watching his waking. On Dr Mountain’s coming in, I told him of the new Protestant patient and of the circumstances I have here set down. We went to where the couple lay and were looking at them when Stanhope awoke. He gazed helplessly around until his eyes met those of Monaghan, which had been fixed on him from the time he came in. The glitter of the old fire sprung up in Stanhope’s eyes and a flush passed over his white face. Neither said a word for quite a while. During the pause the defiant look faded from Stanhope’s face, and I could see recollection of old neighborhood and a sense of community of suffering filled his bosom. The stern, hard features relaxed and a bony hand was thrust across.
“Is that yersilf, Monaghan; will ye shak hans wid me?”
“Glad an proud to do that same, and let bygones be bygones, Mr Stanhope.”