In the meantime Mark was busy, from early in the morning until late
at night, in getting on board the steamboat such provisions, tools and
other necessaries, as they had been forewarned it would be wise to take.
The purchase of these things, and the settlement of their bill at the
National, reduced their finances to so low an ebb, that if the captain
had delayed his departure any longer, they would have been in almost as
bad a plight as the unfortunate poorer emigrants, who (seduced on board
by solemn advertisement) had been living on the lower deck a whole week,
and exhausting their miserable stock of provisions before the voyage
commenced. There they were, all huddled together with the engine and the
fires. Farmers who had never seen a plough; woodmen who had never used
an axe; builders who couldn't make a box; cast out of their own land,
with not a hand to aid them: newly come into an unknown world, children
in helplessness, but men in wants--with younger children at their backs,
to live or die as it might happen!
The morning came, and they would start at noon. Noon came, and they
would start at night.
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