These changes made new farewells and separations. Common aims, losses, and
sufferings had knit together in friendship many who had never seen each
other until they met on the deck of the big Russian ship, and now not a
few of these must part.
The first vessel to sail was one of the two ships, the _Johanna Maria_.
Her decks were black with people: there were over six hundred of them.
Among the number, waving farewell to the Kropps, the Koelhoffers, the
Schultzheimers, to Frank Schuber and to the Müllers, stood the Thomases,
Madame Fleikener, as we have to call her, and one whom we have not yet
named, the jungfrau Hemin, of Würtemberg, just turning nineteen, of whom
the little Salome and her mother had made a new, fast friend on the old
Russian ship.
A week later the _Captain Grone_--that is, the galiot--hoisted the Dutch
flag as the _Johanna Maria_ had done, and started after her with other
hundreds on her own deck, I know not how many, but making eleven hundred
in the two, and including, for one, young Wagner. Then after two weeks
more the remaining ship, the _Johanna_, followed, with Grandsteiner as
supercargo, and seven hundred emigrants. Here were the Müllers and most of
their relatives and fellow-villagers. Frank Schuber was among them, and
was chosen steward for the whole shipful.
At last they were all off. But instead of a summer's they were now to
encounter a winter's sea, and to meet it weakened and wasted by sickness
and destitution. The first company had been out but a week when, on New
Year's night, a furious storm burst upon the crowded ship. With hatches
battened down over their heads they heard and felt the great buffetings of
the tempest, and by and by one great crash above all other noises as the
mainmast went by the board. The ship survived; but when the storm was over
and the people swarmed up once more into the pure ocean atmosphere and saw
the western sun set clear, it set astern of the ship. Her captain had put
her about and was steering for Amsterdam.
"She is too old," the travelers gave him credit for saying, when long
afterwards they testified in court; "too old, too crowded, too short of
provisions, and too crippled, to go on such a voyage; I don't want to lose
my soul that way." And he took them back.
They sailed again; but whether in another ship, or in the same with
another captain, I have not discovered. Their sufferings were terrible.
The vessel was foul. Fevers broke out among them. Provisions became
scarce. There was nothing fit for the sick, who daily grew more numerous.
Storms tossed them hither and yon. Water became so scarce that the sick
died for want of it.
One of the Thomas children, a little girl of eight years, whose father lay
burning with fever and moaning for water, found down in the dark at the
back of one of the water-casks a place where once in a long time a drop of
water fell from it. She placed there a small vial, and twice a day bore
it, filled with water-drops, to the sick man. It saved his life. Of the
three ship-loads only two families reached America whole, and one of these
was the Thomases. A younger sister told me in 1884 that though the child
lived to old age on the banks of the Mississippi River, she could never
see water wasted and hide her anger.
The vessels were not bound for Philadelphia, as the Russian ship had been.
Either from choice or of necessity the destination had been changed before
sailing, and they were on their way to New Orleans.
That city was just then--the war of 1812-15 being so lately over--coming
boldly into notice as commercially a strategic point of boundless
promise. Steam navigation had hardly two years before won its first
victory against the powerful current of the Mississippi, but it was
complete. The population was thirty-three thousand; exports, thirteen
million dollars. Capital and labor were crowding in, and legal, medical,
and commercial talent were hurrying to the new field.
Scarcely at any time since has the New Orleans bar, in proportion to its
numbers, had so many brilliant lights. Edward Livingston, of world-wide
fame, was there in his prime. John R. Grymes, who died a few years before
the opening of the late civil war, was the most successful man with juries
who ever plead in Louisiana courts. We must meet him in the court-room by
and by, and may as well make his acquaintance now. He was emphatically a
man of the world. Many anecdotes of him remain, illustrative rather of
intrepid shrewdness than of chivalry. He had been counsel for the pirate
brothers Lafitte in their entanglements with the custom-house and courts,
and was believed to have received a hundred thousand dollars from them as
fees. Only old men remember him now. They say he never lifted his voice,
but in tones that grew softer and lower the more the thought behind them
grew intense would hang a glamour of truth over the veriest sophistries
that intellectual ingenuity could frame. It is well to remember that this
is only tradition, which can sometimes be as unjust as daily gossip. It is
sure that he could entertain most showily. The young Duke of
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, was once his guest. In his book of travels in
America (1825-26) he says:
My first excursion [in New Orleans] was to visit Mr. Grymes, who here
inhabits a large, massive, and splendidly furnished house.... In the
evening we paid our visit to the governor of the State.... After this we
went to several coffee-houses where the lower classes amuse themselves....
Mr. Grymes took me to the masked ball, which is held every evening during
the carnival at the French theater.... The dress of the ladies I observed
to be very elegant, but understood that most of those dancing did not
belong to the better class of society.... At a dinner, which Mr. Grymes
gave me with the greatest display of magnificence,... we withdrew from the
first table, and seated ourselves at the second, in the same order in
which we had partaken of the first. As the variety of wines began to set
the tongues of the guests at liberty, the ladies rose, retired to another
apartment, and resorted to music. Some of the gentlemen remained with the
bottle, while others, among whom I was one, followed the ladies.... We had
waltzing until 10 o'clock, when we went to the masquerade in the theater
in St. Philip street.... The female company at the theater consisted of
quadroons, who, however, were masked.
Such is one aspect given us by history of the New Orleans towards which
that company of emigrants, first of the three that had left the other
side, were toiling across the waters.