What seemed to the eager immigrants an unreasonably long time of waiting passed while the customs officers were looking after the first-class passengers and they were leaving the ship. When the way was clear, word was passed forward to get the immigrants ready to debark. First, however, Boarding Inspector Vance held a little tribunal at the rail forward on the hurricane deck, at which all persons who had citizens’ papers were to present them. I watched him carefully as he proceeded with his task of picking out genuine citizens from the other sort and allowing them to leave the ship at the docks; and if all officials are as thorough and as careful as he, then is the law enforced to its limit, and the many evasions of it which seem to exist are things no official or set of officials can prevent operating on this side of the water. Here, again, I could not help seeing that deceit, evasion, and trickery were possible, inasmuch as the inspector can only take the papers on the face of them, together with the immigrant’s own statement; and if the gangs who smuggle aliens in on borrowed, transferred, or forged citizens’ papers have been careful enough in preparing and coaching their pupils, there is no way of apprehending the fraud at the port of arrival, nor would there be at the port of embarkation; but _there would be no chance for any such practices if the examinations were made in the community of the immigrant’s residence_. Those whose citizenship was doubted by the inspector, and who had their families with them, were compelled to go to Ellis Island with them, or allow the families to go through the process alone. At last we were summoned to pass aft and ashore. One torrent of humanity poured up each companion-way to the hurricane deck and aft, while a third stream went through the main deck alley-way, all lugging the preposterous bundles. The children, seeing sufficient excitement on foot to incite them to cry, and being by this time very hungry, began to yell with vigor. A frenzy seemed to possess some of the people as groups became separated. If a gangway had been set to a rail-port forward, there would have been little of the hullabaloo, but for a time it was frightful. The steerage stewards kept up their brutality to the last. One woman was trying to get up the companion-way with a child in one arm, her deck chair brought from home hung on the other, which also supported a large bundle. She blocked the passage for a moment. One of the stewards stationed by it reached up, dragged her down, tore the chair off her arm, splitting her sleeve as he did so and scraping the skin off her wrist, and in his rage he broke the chair into a dozen pieces. The woman passed on sobbing, but cowed and without a threat. As we passed down the gangway an official stood there with a mechanical checker numbering the passengers, and uniformed dock watchmen directed the human flood pouring off the ship where to set down the baggage to await customs inspection.