VII. VOYAGE ON THE LAKE STEAMER
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In the forenoon of the next day the immigrants arrived at Buffalo. That evening they started across Lake Erie on the steamer Sultana. The whole remaining part of their journey was to be on water — across lakes, up rivers, and through canals. Just ahead of them lay three great lakes over which they must pass. They had embarked on a vast, restless, inland water, but on this voyage they at least could see land on one side of the ship. At intervals, the Sultana touched shore to discharge or take aboard passengers, cargo, and firewood for her engines.
The Sultana was a fairly large steamer with one water wheel on either side; she was overloaded with people and cargo. The immigrants were given quarters below, on the middle deck, and when they were sent to their quarters, they learned another English word, steerage. Cabins were built in three rows in the hold, each one four feet wide, and each one accommodating two full-grown persons of the same sex, or a married couple. Two children under eight years of age were counted as one grown person; children under three years of age were transported free of charge, but no one asked the little ones’ ages, and all children carried aboard by the parents were allowed free passage, however old they were.
Kristina took charge of Harald while Karl Oskar carried Johan on one arm and Lill-Märta on the other. Johan was four, but tall as a six-year-old. Other parents carried children even larger, never before had such big two-year-old babies been seen. But it seemed as if all Americans loved children: they brightened and smiled as soon as a child came near them, and no one spoke harshly when the youngsters were noisy or caused trouble; children were the most welcome of all immigrants, it seemed.
Kristina was uneasy each time she boarded a new means of transportation — she was afraid her family might be separated during the journey; she wanted them to hold on to each other all the time.
The American steamer was new and the middle deck roomier, lighter, and drier than the immigrants’ living quarters on the old Swedish ship; nor did this vessel smell musty. But when all had gone aboard and packed themselves in down there, it was just as crowded and uncomfortable as it had been on the Charlotta. The passengers’ belongings were stacked together helter-skelter on the lower deck, and the owners had to look after them and watch that nothing fell overboard. On the Charlotta they had been allowed the unrestricted use of the upper deck in fine weather, but here they were confined to the lower deck. Yet they could see there was plenty of space on the upper deck, where only a few passengers walked about. The immigrants enviously watched these fellow travelers who had their individual cabins and more room than they needed: why was that deck up there in the fresh air and daylight reserved for only a few, while such a great number of people must stay below, packed together?
Long Landberg explained that the upper deck was first class, which cost much more than a berth in steerage, and the ladies and gentlemen up there were wealthy travelers on a pleasure excursion.
Kristina noticed that the passengers on the upper deck were dressed like the people she had seen walking about near the harbor in New York: the women in silk skirts and velvet shoes, the men in tall hats and long coats of costly cloth. And here, too, the women went about with open umbrellas even though it wasn’t raining. Those passengers up there were not, like themselves, traveling to find homes; they already had homes. Why did they travel when not forced to? How could anyone, of his own free will, roam about on lakes and seas? If Kristina ever found another home in this life, she would certainly stay there.
And these passengers who traveled just for fun were allowed to keep the whole upper deck to themselves, while the immigrants, forced to find new homes, were crowded and jostled down here. Kristina thought that the passengers in first class were like the gentry at home in Sweden, and she asked her brother-in-law Robert, who had learned so much from all kinds of books, to explain this: Hadn’t he said that the inhabitants of North America were all alike and not divided into gentry and ordinary people?
Robert tried to make himself clear: He had only said that different classes did not exist in the New World, no one was born into a class. But there was, of course, a difference between people, in that some were rich and others poor; some could afford to spend more, others less; some could afford first class, others could not. There were only two kinds of people in North America: those who had lived here long enough to grow rich, and those lately arrived and still poor.
There was no other difference between people, Robert insisted. Kristina could observe for herself — did she see anyone who took off his hat or cap to another? Did she see any man bow or any woman curtsy? Here one didn’t stand on ceremony, the poor didn’t kowtow to the rich as they did at home in Sweden.
The ship’s fare was ample, even abundant, but to the Swedish peasants it seemed oddly prepared and peculiarly flavored. American food consisted mainly of things mixed together, and one’s tongue was unable to distinguish one kind of food from another; the immigrants did not always know what they were eating. But still more foreign than the food were their fellow passengers in the hold. They were lodged with other immigrants, people who, like themselves, came from countries of the Old World, each speaking his own language. Their fellow passengers were dressed in outlandish clothes, they laughed and sang and behaved in the strangest ways, and they were loaded down with an amazing variety of things: axes, hoes, spades, harnesses, saws, tubs, barrels, cradles, clocks, pots, yarn winders, ale kegs. The Swedish immigrants began to feel that they had arrived empty handed in North America when they saw what these others carried along. Many of those who crowded the ship with their belongings were Germans, the guide told them; a German was wedded to his possessions and would not part with them when emigrating. But when they saw a spade with a six-foot handle, said Landberg, they might be sure the owner was Irish: the Irish were too lazy to bend their backs while digging; at work they stood upright.
He pointed out some tall men in skin jackets who carried guns and hunting sacks and had knives in their belts. They were fur hunters on their way to the forests of the West for autumn game.
But strangest of all the steerage passengers were two Indians. The immigrants studied them with timid wonder. The two men were draped in pieces of red-striped woolen cloth which covered them from head to knees and which they usually held closely around themselves; they wore trousers reaching the middle of their thighs and held in place by strings to a belt around their waists; on their feet they wore skin shoes but no socks. From the Indians’ ears hung beautiful glittering silk bands; the color of their faces was sooty brown, and their sloe-black eyes lay deep in their skulls, lurkingly under their brows.
Most of the time the Indians sat immobile, staring moodily before them, each holding his blanket tight around his body as if this garment were his only possession. No one addressed the brown-hued men, and they themselves seemed inclined to silence. When they spoke to each other they used a language which sounded like a series of short grunts. These Indians could not be wild, as they were allowed to travel unhindered among white, Christian people. But they sat apart from the other passengers, who walked by them in silence and with some uneasiness; perhaps they were heathens after all; one couldn’t know for sure; there was something dark, threatening, and cruel in their looks, something inspiring fear. The immigrants did not know what to think of or expect from these curiously draped figures.