An Irish Cargo.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume VI, Issue 434, 26 August 1851, Page 4

An Irish Cargo.

East and west there flows a deep, and seemingly unassuageable, flood of Irish emigration ; no condition of things at home appears to have much effect upon it. After a period of famine and convulsion, indeed, the stream runs more turbid and hurriedly — but neither plentiful harvests, political calm, nor commercial activity, can ever cause the channel to become dry. In the latter direction the moral current that sets in towards the American shores has averaged 250,000 persons for some years past, with an occasional "freshet" after scarcity or rebellion. Towards England the emigration assumes a more intermitting form. The tide may even recede at intervals ; but in the long run there is no doubt that vast masses are impelled hither which never find their way back. Mr. Cobden almost

ventures to calculate the period when Lancashire will become a colony of Ireland— and that manufacturing county affords an asylum to but a tithe of the refugees who either settle in the island or make it an outlet to other scenes of enterprise. But though the absorbing powers of England and America may, on the whole, be pretty equal, the hopes and the fate of the exiles from Irish homes who depart in one direction or the other, are strikingly different. Let us look back at the pregnant instances which occurred only within the past week. It is a picture that might well cover an Englishman with sorrow and shame, if it did not prompt him to endeavour to i-emove the sources of so mortifying a parallel. On Tuesday last an inquest was held on the body of an infant, aged four weeks, which had died on board the steamer Pelican, while on the passage from Ireland to London. The evidence brought forward left with the jury no doubt that the poor babe had perished from cold and exposure. Its mother, a woman named Ann Connell, had paid 2s. (raised by pawning her clothes) for a deck passage to London ; and on the deck she and her child remained for three days and nights without any covering but the air, exposed to the tender mercies of a February sky. It speaks well for the mother's tenderness that the child lived until the steamer had nearly arrived in port. On arriving in London, however, it was taken to an infirmary, where the nurse, who was examined upon the inquest, declared that she received it a corpse, though in "plump condition," and evidently having been a healthy well-cared-for infant. The scene on board the steamer —of which the evidence adduced upon the inquiry over Ann Connells infant gives us an accidental glimpse — was lamentable enough. " Seven hundred and fifty men, women and children," we are told, were passengers upon the deck of the Pelican on that single voyage. They were all "huddled together." "°We were so closely packed," pursues the witness, "that we could scarcely moye — the rain came down several times, and the passengers were unable to get under any covering." The deck was wet any dirty, and was washed on Saturday while the people remained packed together. On the same deck were a number of cattle, who appear to have been much better off than the human passengers, many of whom throughout the three days and nights of the voyage had " scarcely any food." This, be it observed, i 3 recorded as no extraordinary incident, commanding notoriety through its intrinsic. interest. It is the common log-book of a passage performed weekly and daily, to which we obtain access in a perfectly incidental and circuitous manner. If Ann Connells infant had endured the cold and exposure but a few hours longer, and died in the infirmary instead of on deck of the Pelican, not a word would have been said of the horrible three days and nights that witnessed the transit of the population of two Irish villages from Cork Harbour to the Thames. Nor is it of those horrors that we wish to speak. Three days and nights, though their lingering hours pass amid cold, wet and hunger, nevertheless do pass. But, what of the arrival ? Seven hundred and fifty persons land out of one vessel on the Rotherhithe Wharf— what is their welcome and destination ? It is not too much to predict that out of the whole- number nine in every tec came over with no other purpose or profession than beggary ; and these are but detachments of the great army. — Every week sees the arrival of two or more steamers as crowded as the Pelican, (though, we hope, after a more prosperous passage), and crowded with the same class of emigrants. The authorities in Ireland, whom they call "guardians" of the poor, help forward the melancholy process. Mr. John Gardener, the summoning officer to the jury at the inquest, declared that he had known as many as 1,000 brought over at one time, at the rate of Is. 6d. or 2s. ahead—for the greater part of whom the parochial authorities had found the pas-sage-money ! Well might the witness wonder that Government, long ago, had not found means to " put a stop to it." Turn we to the American side of the picture. In a letter from the Rev. Sidney Godolphin O&borne, published within the last few days, we are told : " Within these few weeks between 100 and 200 of the peasantry have left one neighbburhood, in the county of Galway, as emigrants. It will be, I think, some matter of surprise to most of us to learn how quickly the being who at home has the character not merely of being most miserable, but most helpless, abroad becomes comparatively- a man of wealth — the late starving dependent upon the law's extorted charity is transformed into a liberal agent of good to those who are yet in that condition. A young man, who only left the employ of a friend of my own (a most benevolent English settler in Connemara) last Spring, has already sent through the said employer's hands £16 for his aged parents. Several who left in the Summer have sent £4 or £5 each. Two young men who left Ireland last September, and sailed to New Orleans, and thence 500 miles up the Mississippi, have each already sent £± for their relations ot home. The instances I have quoted might be multiplied to an extent I could hardly expect your readers to believe. There surely is good stuff in the character of these people if it

was turnned by judgment to a good purpose." Iv England tho Irish emigrant cast himself adrift upon the stray charity of London streets, or the country highwaysthinking himself lucky if he can keep beyond the range of the policemen and the parish officers. In America he becomes industrious and independent. Travelling eastward, he takes to begging — travelling westward, to work. Can there be any doubt of the point of the compass to which policy would direct him ? Napoleon wrote " To England" on every sign-post in the north road of France, in the famishing districts of Ireland we would write, in the boldest characters, "To Canada."— i.tlas.

Wonderful Cures of Hydrophobia. M. Buisson has written to the Paris Academy of Sciences to claim as his a small treatise on hydrophobia, addressed to the Academy so far back as 1835, and signed with a single initial. The case referred to in that treatise was his own. He had been called to visit a woman, who, for three days, was said to be suffering under the disease. She had the usual s?taptoras, contraction of the throat, inability to swallowy. abundant secretion of saliva, and foaming |at the mouth. Her neighbours said she had been bitten,by a mad dog about forty days before. At her own urgent entreaties she was bled, and died a few hours after as was expected. M. Buisson, who had his hands covered with blood, incautiously* cleansed them with a towel, which was used to wipe the mouth of the patient. He then had an ulceration on his fingers, yet thought it sufficient to wipe off the saliva that adhered with a little water. The ninth day after, being in his cabriolet, he was suddently seized with a pain in his throat, and one still greater in his eyes. The saliva was continually pouring into his mouth: the impression of a current of air, the sight of brilliant bodies, gave a painful sensation; his body appeared to him so light that ho felt he could leap a prodigious height. He experienced he said, a wish to run and bite, not men, but animals and inanimate bodies. Finally, he drank with difficulty, and the sight of water was still more distressing to him than the pain in his throat. These symptoms recurred every five minutes', and it appeared to him as though the pain commenced in the affected finger, and extended thence to the shoulder. From the whole of the symptoms, he judged himself affected with hydrophobia, and resolved to terminate his life by stifling himself in a vapour bath. Having entered one for the purpose, he caused the heat to be raised to 107 deg. 36 sec. Fab., when he was equally surprised and delighted to find himself free from all complaint. He left the bathing room well, dined heartily, and drank more than usual. Since that time, he says, he has treated, in the same manner, more than eighty persons bitten, in four of whom symptoms had declared themselves ; and in no case has ho failed except in that of one child, seven years old, who died in the bath.—Galignani's Messenger.'

A Cup 6' Kindness.—The soldiers of the 10th Danish battalion, who have long been doing outpost duty against the Ist battalion of Holsteiners, took a friendly farewell on the 16th inst., of their old enemies. The Danes, after making the sign of "suspended hostilities," came on a visit to the Hoistein detachment on guard, to invite them to an amicable glass of punch within the Danish lines, and the invitation was not refused. —Ibid.

The "Washington Monument at New York.—A New York journal gives some particulars respecting the monument to Washington, now in process of erection in that city. The first stone was laid two years ago, and the work has been regularly progressing since. The foundation is at the bottom 81 feet square. It is built of a species of blue rock, a material which is continued up 17 feet above ground. Here the marble work for the obelisk commences. The obelisk is to be 500 feet high, 55 feet square at the base, and 33 feet square at the top. The walls are 15 feet thick at the commencement, leaving a space inside 25 feet squarej which will be of the same dimensions all the way up. The obelisk is now 76 feet high, and it is anticipated that at least 50 feet will be added during another season. The outside is constructed of what is known as Symington's large crystal marble, procured from the vicinity of Baltimore. The main body of the wall is of blue gneiss, and with this the interior is lined, except where blocks presented by States or associations have been inserted. The quality of the material and its capacity to sustain pressure and resist frost were most satisfactorily tested in some experiments made at two different times under the, direction of the department of tho interior. Thirty States and one territory have determined to present blocks of stone to be inserted on the inside, of which five are already in the wall, and nine are on the ground. Above fifty associations have requested permission to make similar donations, and a number have been received. Some of them are of elaborated workmanship and beautiful material, almost every prominent kind of stone or marble in the Union being there in one or more specimens. There have been expended on the work up to this time 120,000 dollars. The estimated cost of the whole shaft will be 500,000 doUaxs.—Maitland Mercury.