Across the Plains, with Other Memories and EssaysStevenson, Robert Louis
General
Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Essays; Monterey (Calif.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
At length, and after how long an interval I hesitate to guess, the crowd
began to move, heavily straining through itself. About the same time
some lamps were lighted, and threw a sudden flare over the shed. We were
being filtered out into the river boat for Jersey City. You may imagine
how slowly this filtering proceeded, through the dense, choking crush,
every one overladen with packages or children, and yet under the
necessity of fishing out his ticket by the way; but it ended at length
for me, and I found myself on deck under a flimsy awning and with a
trifle of elbow-room to stretch and breathe in. This was on the
starboard; for the bulk of the emigrants stuck hopelessly on the port
side, by which we had entered. In vain the seamen shouted to them to
move on, and threatened them with shipwreck. These poor people were
under a spell of stupor, and did not stir a foot. It rained as heavily
as ever, but the wind now came in sudden claps and capfuls, not without
danger to a boat so badly ballasted as ours; and we crept over the river
in the darkness, trailing one paddle in the water like a wounded duck,
and passed ever and again by huge, illuminated steamers running many
knots, and heralding their approach by strains of music. The contrast
between these pleasure embarkations and our own grim vessel, with her
list to port and her freight of wet and silent emigrants, was of that
glaring description which we count too obvious for the purposes of art.
The landing at Jersey City was done in a stampede. I had a fixed sense
of calamity, and to judge by conduct, the same persuasion was common to
us all. A panic selfishness, like that produced by fear, presided over
the disorder of our landing. People pushed, and elbowed, and ran, their
families following how they could. Children fell, and were picked up to
be rewarded by a blow. One child, who had lost her parents, screamed
steadily and with increasing shrillness, as though verging towards a fit;
an official kept her by him, but no one else seemed so much as to remark
her distress; and I am ashamed to say that I ran among the rest. I was
so weary that I had twice to make a halt and set down my bundles in the
hundred yards or so between the pier and the railway station, so that I
was quite wet by the time that I got under cover. There was no
waiting-room, no refreshment room; the cars were locked; and for at least
another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon the draughty, gaslit
platform. I sat on my valise, too crushed to observe my neighbours; but
as they were all cold, and wet, and weary, and driven stupidly crazy by
the mismanagement to which we had been subjected, I believe they can have
been no happier than myself. I bought half-a-dozen oranges from a boy,
for oranges and nuts were the only refection to be had. As only two of
them had even a pretence of juice, I threw the other four under the cars,
and beheld, as in a dream, grown people and children groping on the track
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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