The voyage over the Atlantic draws to an end. One day a growing restlessness and excitement is perceptible, and the travellers cast inquiring glances ahead. It is said that the American coast will be visible in an hour. And so it is. An irregular line appears to starboard. That is Long Island. Two hours more, and the boat glides into the mouth of the Hudson River and comes alongside at Ellis Island in the harbour of New York. A row of other vessels lie moored at the quays. These also have brought immigrants to America and will soon return to fetch more. They must go backwards and forwards year out and year in to carry three thousand persons daily to the United States.
Gunnar has packed his things in good time and takes up a favourable position from which he can observe his fellow-travellers. He has never heard such a noise and never seen such bustle. The people throng the gangways, call to one another, haul out their discoloured portmanteaus and their roped bundles. There are seen Swedes and Germans, Polish and Russian Jews, Galicians and Croats mingled together, some well dressed and with overcoats, others in tattered clothes and with a coarse handkerchief in place of a collar.
Yonder, overlooking New York harbour, stands the colossal statue of Liberty, a female figure holding a torch in her right hand. When darkness lies over the earth she throws a dazzling beam of electric light out over the water, the quays, houses, and ships. But Gunnar experiences no feeling of freedom as he sets his foot on American soil. He and all his fellow-travellers are provided with numbered tickets and marshalled into long compartments in a huge hall. Then they are called out one after another to be questioned, and a doctor comes and examines them. Those who suffer from lung disease or other complaint, or being old and feeble have no prospect of gaining a livelihood, receive a peremptory order of exclusion on grey paper and must return by the next vessel to their fatherland. The others who pass the examination proceed in small steamers to the great city, where, among the four millions of New York, they vanish like chaff before the wind.
From whatever land they may come they always find fellow-countrymen in New York, for this city is a conglomeration of all the peoples of the world, and seventy different languages are spoken in it. A third of its inhabitants have been born in foreign countries. In Brooklyn, the quarter on Long Island, there are whole streets where only Swedes live. In the "Little Italy" quarter live more Italians than there are in Naples, in the "Chinese Town" there are five thousand Chinese, and even Jews from Russia and Poland have their own quarter. Gunnar soon finds that New York is more complicated than he supposed when he was rolling out on the Atlantic.
Meanwhile he decides to take it easy at first, and to learn his way about before plunging into the struggle for existence. In Brooklyn he soon meets with a fellow-countryman and gets a roof over his head. A pleasant, well-to-do railway employé from Stockholm takes pleasure in showing him about and impressing him with his knowledge of America.
"This town must be old," says Gunnar, "or it could not have grown so large."
"Old! No, certainly not. Compared to Stockholm it is a mere child. It is barely three hundred years old, and at the time of Gustavus Adolphus it did not contain a thousand inhabitants. But now it is second only to London."
"That is wonderful. How can you account for New York becoming so large? Stockholm and Bremen are pigmies beside it. I have never seen the like in my life. There are forests of masts and steamboat funnels in all directions, and at the quays vessels are loaded and unloaded with the most startling speed."
"Yes, but you must remember that the population of the United States increases at an extraordinary rate. During last century it doubled every twenty years. And remember also that nearly half the foreign trade of the Union passes through New York. Hence are exported grain, meat, tobacco, cotton, petroleum, manufactured goods, and many other things. It is, therefore, not remarkable that New York needs 36 miles of quays with warehouses, and that more than seventy steamboat lines sail to and from the port. And, besides, it is a great industrial town. Think of its position and its fine harbour! Eastward lies the Atlantic with routes to Europe; westwards run innumerable railway lines, five of which stretch right through to the Pacific coast."