carried to it from our steerage passengers. You know that these are
always poor people, who are often barely supplied themselves with
necessaries for their voyage. The poor are almost invariably kind
and compassionate to one another, and Gaffer Gray is half right
when he says--

"The poor man alone,
When he hears the poor moan,
Of his morsel one morsel will give."

They (the men from the brig) gave us news from Halifax, where they
had put in. The cholera had been in Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New York; the latter town was almost deserted, and
the people flying in numbers from the others. This was rather bad
news to us, who were going thither to find audiences (if possible
not few, whether fit or not), but it was awful to such as were
going back to their homes and families. I looked at the anxious
faces gathered round our informer, and thought how the poor hearts
were flying, in terrible anticipation of the worst, to the nests
where they had left their dear ones, and eagerly counting every
precious head in the homes over which so black a cloud of doom had
gathered in their absence.... My father, though a bad sailor, and
suffering occasionally a good deal, has, upon the whole, borne the
voyage well. Poor dear Dall has been the greatest wretch on board;
she has been perfectly miserable the whole time. It has made me
very unhappy, for she has come away from those she loves very
dearly on my account, and I cannot but feel sad to see that most
excellent creature now, in what should be the quiet time of her
life, leaving home and all its accustomed ways, habits, and
comforts, and dear A----, who is her darling, to come wandering to
the ends of the earth after me.... These distant and prolonged
separations seem like foretastes of death.... We have seen an
American sun, and an American moon, and American stars, and we
think they "get up these things better than we do." We have had
several fresh squalls, and one heavy gale; we have shipped sundry
seas; we have had rat-hunting and harpooning of porpoises; we have
caught several hake and dogfish.

NEW YORK, AMERICA, Wednesday, September 5, 1832.

Here we really are, and perhaps you, who are not here, will believe
it more readily than I who am, and to w