"In the year 1832, on the 24th of December, one of those clear bright days that sometimes supersede the regular snowy, sleety Christmas weather, a large ship lay off Plymouth; the Blue Peter flying from her masthead, quarters of beef hanging from her mizzen-booms, and strings of cabbages from her stern rails; her decks crowded with coarsely-clad blue-nosed passengers, and lumbered with boxes, barrels, hen-coops, spars, and chain-cables. The wind was rising with a hollow, dreary sound. Boats were hurrying to and fro, between the vessel and the beach, where stood excited groups of old people and young children. The hoarse, impatient voices of officers issuing their commands, were mingled with the shrill wailing of women on the deck and the shore. "It was the emigrant ship 'Cassandra,' bound for Australia during the period of the 'Bounty' system, when emigration recruiters, stimulated by patriotism and a handsome percentage, rushed frantically up and down the country, earnestly entreating 'healthy married couples,' and single souls of either sex, to accept a free passage to 'a land of plenty.' The English labourers had not then discovered that Australia was a country where masters were many and servants scarce. In spite of poverty and poorhouse fare, few of the John Bull family could be induced to give heed to flaming placards they could not read, or inspiring harangues they could not understand. The admirable education which in 1832, at intervals of seven days, was distributed in homœopathic doses among the agricultural olive-branches of England, did not include modern geography, even when reading and writing were imparted. If a stray Sunday-school scholar did acquire a faint notion of the locality of Canaan, he was never permitted to travel as far as the British Colonies. "To the ploughman out of employ, Canaan, Canada, and Australia were all '_furrin parts_;' he did not know the way to them; but he knew the way to the poorhouse, so took care to keep within reach of it. "Thus it came to pass that the charterers of the good ship 'Cassandra' were grievously out in their calculations; and failing to fill with English, were obliged to make up their complement with Irish; who, having nothing to fall upon, but the charity of the poor to the poorer, are always ready to go anywhere for a daily meal.