Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An AutobiographyThompson, Samuel
History
Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography
Thompson, Samuel
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Thompson, Samuel, 1810-1886; Toronto (Ont.) -- Biography; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
Our recollections of Galway are of a mixed character--painful, because
of the consciousness that the empire at large must be held responsible
for the unequal distribution of nature's blessings amongst her
people--pleasant, because of the uniform hospitality and courtesy shown
to us by all classes and creeds of the townsfolk.
CHAPTER VI.
MORE SEA EXPERIENCES.
In the month of July we were ready for sea again. In the meantime
Captain Ward had got together a new list of passengers, and we more than
doubled our numbers by the addition of several Roman Catholic gentlemen
of birth and education with their followers, and a party of Orangemen
and their families, of a rather rough farming sort, escaping from
religious feuds and hostile neighbours. A blooming widow Culleeney, of
the former class, was added to the scanty female society on board; and
for the first few hours after leaving port, we had fun and dancing on
deck galore. But alas, sea-sickness put an end to our merriment all too
soon. Our new recruits fled below, and scarcely showed their faces on
deck for several days. Yet, in this apparently quiet interval, discord
had found her way between decks.
We were listening one fine evening to the comical jokes and rich brogue
of the most gentlemanly of the Irish Catholics above-mentioned, when
suddenly a dozen men, women and children, armed with sticks and foaming
at the mouth, rushed up the steerage hatchway, and without note of
warning or apparent provocation, attacked the defenceless group standing
near us with the blindness of insanity and the most frantic cries of
rage. Fortunately there were several of the ship's officers and sailors
on deck, who laid about them lustily with their fists, and speedily
drove the attacking party below, where they were confined for some days,
under a threat of severe punishment from the captain, who meant what he
said. So this breeze passed over. What it was about, who was offended,
and how, we never could discover; we set it down to the general
principle, that the poor creatures were merely 'blue-mowlded for want of
a bating.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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