The abuses from which sailors in those days suffered, were not when at sea or on board ship. It was the harpies of the land who lay in wait like vultures, to pollute and destroy their bodies and souls--male and female land-sharks, who would plunder and rob a sailor of his pay and his three months’ advance, and then turn him adrift without money or clothes. It made no difference to these brazen-hearted thieves--and the women, if possible, were worse than the men--whether a sailor was bound round the Horn in midwinter or to the East Indies in midsummer; they saw to it that he took nothing away with him but the ragged clothes he stood in, and perhaps a ramshackle old sea chest with a shabby suit of oilskins, a pair of leaky sea boots, a bottle or two of Jersey lightning, and two or three plugs of tobacco chucked into it. These vice-hardened men and women of various nationalities were permitted to work their abominable trade unmolested, almost within the shadow of church spires and Courts of Justice in the chief seaports of the United States. The destitute condition in which men were put on board of American ships became so common that clothing and other necessaries were provided for them in what was known as the slop chest, in charge of the steward, with which all ships bound upon distant voyages were supplied, and from which the crew received whatever they required at about one half the cost extorted by the slop shops on shore. This arrangement was necessary, as otherwise, in many instances, the men would not have had sufficient clothing to stand a watch in cold or stormy weather.