neighbourhood of New York.  A Committee appointed by the Aldermen of New York in 1846 visited one of those institutions, and thus reported upon it:  “The Committee discovered in one apartment, 50 feet square, 100 sick and dying emigrants lying on straw; and among them, in their midst, the bodies of two who had died four or five days before, but who had been left for that time without burial!  They found in the course of their inquiry that decayed vegetables, bad flour, and putrid meat, were specially purchased and provided for the use of the strangers!  Such as had strength to escape from these slaughter-houses fled from them as from a plague, and roamed through the city, exciting the compassion—­perhaps the horror—­of the passers by.  Those who were too ill to escape had to take their chance—­such chance as poisonous food, infected air, and bad treatment afforded them of ultimate recovery."[293]

It may be fairly assumed that the mortality amongst the emigrants who went to the United States was at least as great as amongst those who went to British America.  The emigration from Ireland for the above six years was, as already stated, 1,180,409, seventeen per cent. of whom will give us 200,668, which, being added to 1,039,552, the calculated number of deaths at home, we have ONE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND DEATHS resulting directly from the Irish Famine, and the pestilence which followed in its track.

The mortality on board some of the emigrant ships was terrible; and, whatever the cause, the deaths in British ships enormously exceeded those in the ships of any other country.[294] The “Erin Queen” sailed with 493 passengers, of whom 136 died on the voyage.  The scenes of misery on board of this vessel could hardly have been surpassed in a crowded and sickly slaver on the African coast.  It appears, writes Dr. Stratten, that the “Avon,” in 552 passengers, had 246 deaths; and the “Virginius,” in 476, had 267 deaths.[295] An English gentleman, referring to a portion of Connaught in which he was stationed at the time, writes thus:  “Hundreds, it is said, had been compelled to emigrate by ill-usage, and in one vessel containing 600 not one hundred survived!"[296]

Much sympathy was shown in Canada for the poor emigrants, and their orphans were, to a great extent, adopted by charitable families.  The legislature of the State of New York, and many of its leading citizens, showed a laudable desire to aid and protect emigrants, in spite of which the most cruel and heartless villainies were practised upon the inexperienced strangers the moment they landed; in fact, before they landed the ship was surrounded by harpies, who seized their luggage and partly by violence, partly by wheedling and misrepresentation, led them where they pleased, and plundered then at will.