before their eyes sufficient, one would have imagined, to have softened the hardest heart and made the most thoughtless think.  There, among them, at the very stove round which they were gathered, stood one with a haggard eye and vacant gaze, and at his feet clung two half-naked infants; a quarter of an hour before he was a hale man, a husband, with five children; now, he was an idiot and a widower, with two.  No tear dimmed his eye, no trace of grief was to be read in his countenance; though the two pledges of the love of one now no more hung helplessly round his legs, he heeded them not; they sought a father’s smile—­they found an idiot’s stare.  They cried:  was it for their mother’s embrace, or did they miss their brother and sisters?  Not even the piteous cry of motherless infancy could light one spark of emotion in the widowed husband’s breast—­all was one awful blank of idiocy.  A wife and three children, buried beneath piles of freight, had found a wretched grave; his heart and his reason had fled after them—­never, apparently, to return.

Surely this was a scene pre-eminently calculated to excite in those who wore, by their very escape, living monuments of God’s mercy, the deepest feelings of gratitude and commiseration; yet, there stood the poor idiot, as if he had not been; and the jest, the glass, and cigar went on with as much indifference as if the party had just come out of a theatre, instead of having providentially escaped from a struggle between life and death.  A more perfect exhibition of heartlessness cannot be conceived, nor do I believe any other part of the world could produce its equal.

The immediate cause of the wreck was the steamer “H.R.W.  Hill” running into us, owing to misunderstanding the bell signal; most providentially she caught alongside of us after striking; if she had not done so, God alone knows who could have been saved.  As far as I could ascertain, all the first-class passengers were saved.  Do not stare at the word first-class, for although in this country of so-called equality no difference of classes is acknowledged, poor helpless emigrants are taken as deck-passengers, and, as freight is the great object, no space is set apart for them; they are stowed away among the cargo as best they can be, with no avenue of escape in case of accidents, and with the additional prospect of being buried beneath bales and barrels.  I believe fifteen passengers perished in this way:  one poor English-woman among the deck-passengers fought her way through the freight, and, after being nearly drowned and trampled to death under the hoofs of the cattle, succeeded in escaping.  A slave-merchant with a dozen negroes managed to save all of them, inasmuch as, being valuable, he had them stowed away in a better place.  The moment the wreck was completed, we proceeded up the river, wasting no time in trying to save any part of the cargo or luggage.  My own position was anything but a pleasant one, though I trust I was truly thankful for my preservation.