Cheering broke loose, and the 30,000 swayed with excitement as the _Atlantic_ docked. As soon as the boat touched the pier, the crowd broke bounds, and the strong detachment of Fifth Ward police with great difficulty prevented many persons from being swept into the water. One man did fall off the dock, and Jenny Lind watched the rescue with sympathetic excitement. People were crowded on all roofs in the neighborhood, and all the windows looking out on to West Street were filled. Spars and rigging of near-by vessels were covered with the reckless, and the fenders and bulkheads of the Hoboken Ferry House and wharves were densely packed with men and women. As Jenny Lind stepped down the gangplank, which was covered with carpet for the occasion, the crowd made a mad dash to get nearer and snapped the gates of the dock; some men and women were trampled under others’ feet, and many were injured, but none killed. The _Tribune_ reporter saw a man, “squeezed under the mass and hardly able to breathe, holding out his new hat at arm’s length and imploring somebody to take it and prevent it from being smashed.” Captain West, master of the _Atlantic_, escorted Jenny Lind to Barnum’s carriage. On the dock Barnum had lined up some of his Museum employees, and as Jenny Lind approached the carriage, they threw bouquets into it, making the public and newspapers believe that here was a spontaneous tribute to a great popular favorite. Writing to her cousin in the country two days after Jenny Lind’s arrival, Miss Julia Knapp, a young girl, said that as she came down the gangplank she wore “a pale blue silk hat, trimmed with lace, a slate-colored dress, with a broadcloth cloak, trimmed with velvet.”[9] When the party was seated in his carriage, Barnum mounted the box beside the driver, because the people knew him, and “my presence on the outside of the carriage aided those who filled the windows and sidewalks along the whole route in coming to the conclusion that Jenny Lind had arrived.” It may be, too, that he wanted to give those who had no opportunity to see his songstress something for their trouble; there were nudgings and shouts of “That’s Barnum; there’s Barnum.” The crowd pressed on after the carriage, and it was with difficulty that it reached the Irving House, where Barnum had engaged rooms. Jenny Lind appeared several times at the window of the carriage and bowed to the people who were throwing flowers into it. It was a quarter to three o’clock before the party finally arrived at the Irving House, where more than 5,000 persons had taken up places in an effort to catch a glimpse of Jenny Lind. The police cleared a passage, and she was able to proceed to her room, but the crowd would not go away and would not be quiet until loud cries for The Swedish Nightingale were finally answered by her appearance on a balcony; she waved her handkerchief to the mass of people, who howled their gratitude.