ly, for the rain was approaching fast, but it was not
easy to pitch the tent on a side-hill. It was done, however, after a
fashion, and the blankets and other things that were liable to be
injured by the wet were safely under shelter before the storm reached
them.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

NEW YORK PRISON-SHIPS.

On the Long Island shore, where the Navy-yard now extends its shops and
vessels around Wallabout Bay, there was in the time of the Revolution a
large and fertile farm. A number of flour mills, moved by water, then
stood there. The flat fields glowed with rich crops of grain, roots, and
clover. Their Dutch owners still kept up the customs and language of
Holland; at Christmas the kettles hissed and bubbled over the huge
fires, laden with olycooks, doughnuts, crullers; at Paas, or Easter, the
colored eggs were cracked by whites and blacks, and all was merriment.
The war no doubt brought its difficulties to the Dutch farmers; they
were sometimes plundered by both parties, and they had little love for
King George. They lived on in decorous silence, waiting for the coming
of peace, remembering how their ancestors in Holland had once fought
successfully for freedom against the Spaniards and the French. But in
front of the quiet farm at Wallabout, and anchored in the bay, were seen
several vessels, decayed, unseaworthy, and repulsive. They were the
prison-ships of New York. Here from the year 1776 a large number of
American prisoners were confined until the close of the war, and the
tragic tales of their sufferings and fate lend a melancholy interest to
the Wallabout shore.

The largest of the prison-ships--the old _Jersey_--was crowded with
miserable captives. She was an old man-of-war, worthless, decayed; her
low decks and dismal hold were converted into a jail; her crowded
inmates were only thinned by the hand of death. The old _Jersey_ may
well be taken as one of the best symbols of the terrors of war. Her
miserable captives pined away for months and years, deprived of all that
makes life tolerable. In the chill and bitter frosts of winter no fires
warmed her half-clad inmates; in the hot summer they faded away beneath
the pitiless heat. Disease preyed upon them, yet no physician, it is
said, was suffered to visit them. They were clothed in rags and tatters;
their food was so scanty and often so repulsive that they lived in
continual starvation. The fair youth of Connecticut and Rhode Island,
the young sai