which impeded the progress of the ship, and lengthened the duration of
our confinement ten days or a fortnight, our voyage was prosperous,
little occurring to break the monotony of confinement on ship-board that
is experienced in sea-passages in general; the only excitement being a
fracas between the captain and cook, owing to complaints made by the
middle-cabin and steerage passengers, which nearly ended fatally to the
former, who would have been stabbed to a certainty, but for a by-stander
wresting the knife from the hand of the enraged subordinate, who had
been supplied too liberally with spirits by the passengers; a
predominating evil on board all emigrant ships, from the drawback of
duty allowed on spirits shipped as stores, and which are retailed on the
voyage to the passengers. The culprit was confined below during the
remainder of the voyage, and when we arrived at New York presented a
pitiable sight, having been rigidly debarred by the captain's orders of
many of the commonest necessaries, I believe, the whole time. Here he
was released and discharged from the ship, glad enough to escape further
punishment, "prosecution" having been, since the occurrence, held _in
terrorem_ over him.

It was late in the afternoon of an intensely cold day, which caused the
spray to congeal as it dashed against the bulwarks and cordage of the
vessel, that we descried with great pleasure looming indistinctly in the
distance, the shores of Sandy Hook, a desolate-looking island, near the
coast of New Jersey, about seven miles south of Long Island Sound. This
the captain informed me was formerly a peninsula, but the isthmus was
broken through by the sea in 1767, the year after the declaration of
American independence, an occurrence which was at the time deemed
ominous of the severance of the colonies from the mother country, and
which proved in reality to be the precursor of that event.