The next morning they went aboard the _Cincinnatus_, accompanied by their kind friends who had come to take the last farewell of them. When Matilda Tone went down to see her quarters she found the little state-room her husband had taken for his family full of the good things these friends had provided for their comfort: sea-stores, wine, porter and spirits, fresh provisions, sweetmeats, and so on. The foresight of Dr. MacDonnell had also provided a small medicine chest with written directions. This was to be of the greatest service, not for the Tones alone, but for their unfortunate fellow-passengers during the trying weeks ahead of them. A voyage across the Atlantic in those days, in a small sailing vessel of 230 tons, was a most horrible experience. There were three hundred passengers on board this boat and they were “crowded to a degree not to be conceived by those who had never been aboard a passenger ship.” “The slaves who are carried from Africa,” Tone writes, “have much more room allowed them than the miserable emigrants who pass from Ireland to America.” The captains were out to make as much money as possible and they loaded their vessels with as little care for the accommodation of their passengers as of any other lumber aboard. The Tones had a small state-room eight feet by six. In this Tone fitted up three berths. One was occupied by Matilda and little Frank; the second by the two Maries; the third by Tone himself and the elder boy William. Tone took on himself the “policing” of the ship, and tried to introduce some cleanliness. Moreover, with the aid of Dr. MacDonnell’s medicine chest and “written directions,” he doctored the passengers—his prescriptions drawing also on his own sea-stores, and the wines and spirits provided by his Belfast friends. He had the satisfaction of landing all his patients safe and sound; and his own family, wonderfully fortunate, had not known one hour’s sickness.