The wanderings and fortunes of some German emigrantsGerstäcker, Friedrich
General
The wanderings and fortunes of some German emigrants
Gerstäcker, Friedrich
Germany -- Emigration and immigration -- Fiction; Immigrants -- Fiction
They had even provided themselves with tools; and although the Captain,
before starting, warned them against carrying over German utensils and
tools, and indeed in general, as he expressed it, "from carrying over
German customs, and German iron, and little German silver," yet neither
the committee nor the rest could be brought to see it in this light, and
some seventy hundredweight of agricultural and other implements--such as
axes, hatchets, saws, chains, ploughs, scythes, and even carts and
waggons, had been got on board and brought across. The freight on board
ship, it is true, was not very high, and although the captain here again
called their attention to the expensive carriage to their place of
settlement in America, yet all the members of the committee, with the
exception of the Pastor Hehrmann, who was inclined to believe in the
reasoning of the old seaman, had read too much about America, and the
manners and usages there, not to be aware that tools were very dear in
the interior, and even that in certain places they were not to be had;
it is true that they did not exactly know whether they should alight
upon these certain places; but they thought that they ought to provide
for the worst, since it was possible that they might. The great mass
cordially approved of this; indeed, most of the emigrants could not
imagine how they could work with tools of a different construction from
those to which they had been accustomed from infancy upwards, and in
this particular were well satisfied with their committee.
The expense of the passage and of the land journey to their ultimate
destination was to be defrayed out of the deposited money, and then the
residue was to be applied, so far as it would extend, in the purchase of
land, and the committee undertook to subscribe such funds as might be
required for any further needful expenses themselves. But the committee
were especially to see that a healthy and good tract of land was
selected, and that it should be conveyed and assured to them in due form
as their sole property; for there was not one of the party but had heard
of the frequent occurrence of frauds there, and who did not fear them;
that, then, everything should be divided and allotted, according to
right and justice, as well labour as property; and it was one of the
chief conditions--and indeed one that was of course--that the committee
were, generally, not only in their adopted country, but on the voyage
out, to keep in view the interests of the members who had confided in
them, to protect and to provide for them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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