The voyage, however, really was a bigger affair in those days than it has become in these times, for it was before the iron horse had been trained to cross the Atlantic. And my father made it a very much more serious business still by engaging for us berths in the steerage of a passenger ship. I hardly think that he would have done so had he been at all aware of what he was undertaking. It is true that he was undoubtedly hard pressed for money, though I have not now, and had not then any such knowledge of his affairs as to enable me to judge to what degree he was straitened. But there was also about my father a sort of Spartan contempt for comfort, and determination not to expend money on his own personal well-being, which was a prominent feature in his character, and which, I have no doubt, contributed to the formation of his resolution to make this journey in the least costly manner possible. But, as I have said, I think that he had no very clear notion of what a steerage passage across the Atlantic implied. As for me, if he had proposed to make the voyage on a raft I should have jumped at the offer! It was, in truth, a sufficiently severe experience. But, as I was then at eighteen, I should have welcomed the chance of making such an expedition, even if I had accurately realised all the accompaniments and all the details of it. We went on board the good ship _Corinthian_, Captain Chadwick, bound for New York, in the September of 1828. Ship and captain were American. I confess that my first feeling on entering the place which was to be my habitation during the next few weeks was one of dismay. It was not that the accommodation was rough. I cared little enough about that, and should have cared as little had it been much rougher. But it was the first time in my life that I had had any experience of the truth of the proverb that misfortune makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows! Of course there was in that part of the vessel allotted to the steerage passengers no sort of enclosure for the different berths, some dozen or score of them, in which the steerage passengers had to sleep. No sort of privacy either by day or by night was possible; add to which, the ventilation was very insufficient, and the whole place was, perhaps unavoidably, dirty to a revolting degree. My father almost at once betook himself to his berth, and rarely left it during the entire voyage--indeed he was for the most part incapable of doing so, having been suffering from his usual sick headache more or less during the whole time. If the voyage was a bad time for me, it must have been far worse for him. Indeed I was scarcely ever below, except when attending on him.