American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United StatesDavies, Ebenezer
History
American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States
Davies, Ebenezer
Slavery -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
On the 29th I went over the Tract House in New York, and was delighted
to see there six steam-presses,--four of which were then at work,
pouring forth in rapid succession sheet after sheet impressed with that
kind of literature which in my judgment is admirably adapted to meet
the wants of this growing country. They were then printing on an
average 27,000 publications, including nearly 2,400 of each kind, _per
diem!_ and employing sixty women in folding and stitching. During the
last year they printed 713,000 volumes, and 8,299,000 smaller
publications, making a total of 217,499,000 pages, or 58,154,661 pages
more than in any previous year! Of the _volumes_ issued, I may mention
14,000 sets of four volumes of D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation,
17,000 of Bunyan's Pilgrim, 10,000 of Baxter's Saints' Rest, 9,000 of
Doddridge's Rise and Progress, 7,000 of Pike's Persuasives, 13,000 of
Alleine's Alarm, and 41,000 of Baxter's Call! The two Secretaries,
whose business it is to superintend the publishing department and
matters relating to the raising of funds, the Rev. Wm. A. Hallock and
the Rev. O. Eastman, are enterprising and plodding men. They told me
they were brought up together in the same neighbourhood, and had both
worked at the plough till they were 20 years of age!
The 1st of May is the great moving day in New York. Throughout the city
one house seems to empty itself into another. Were it to the next door,
it might be done with no great inconvenience; but it is not so. Try to
walk along the causeway, and you are continually blocked up with
tables, chairs, and chests of drawers. Get into an omnibus, and you are
beset with fenders, pokers, pans, Dutch ovens, baskets, brushes, &c.
Hire a cart, and they charge you double fare.
One day at the water-side, happening to see the steamer for Staten
Island about to move off, we stepped on board, and in less than half an
hour found ourselves there. The distance is 6 miles, and the island is
18 miles long, 7 miles wide, and 300 feet high. Here are a large
hospital for mariners and the quarantine burying-ground. It is also
studded with several genteel residences. In 1657 the Indians sold it to
the Dutch for 10 shirts, 30 pairs of stockings, 10 guns, 30 bars of
lead, 30 lbs. of powder, 12 coats, 2 pieces of duffil, 30 kettles, 30
hatchets, 20 hoes, and one case of knives and awls.
Several emigrant vessels were then in the bay. On our return, we saw
with painful interest many of them setting their foot for the first
time on the shore of the New World. They were then arriving in New
York, chiefly from the United Kingdom, at the rate of one thousand a
day. The sight affected me even to tears. It was like a vision of the
British Empire crumbling to pieces, and the materials taken to build a
new and hostile dominion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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