they have been able
to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage
and short provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit;
and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most
dreadful visitation of all--for hope deferred maketh the heart sick.

From the first discovery of America, there has been a tendency to
exaggeration about the resources and capabilities of that country--a
magniloquence on its natural productions, which can be best exemplified
by referring the reader to the fac-simile of the one in Sir Walter
Raleigh's work on Guiana,[1] now in the British Museum. Shakespeare had,
no doubt, read Raleigh's fanciful description of "the men whose heads do
grow beneath their shoulders," &c.; for he was thirty-four years of age
when this print was published, only seventeen years before his death.

[Footnote 1: Brevis et admiranda descriptio REGNI GVIANAE, AVRI
abundantissimi, in AMERICA, sev novo orbe, sub linea AEquinoctilia siti:
quod nuper admodum, Annis nimirum 1594, 1595, et 1596 per generosum
Dominum Dr. GVALTHERVM RALEGH Equitem Anglum detectum est: paulo post
jussa ejus duobus libellis comprehensa. Ex quibus JODOCVS HONDIVS
TABVLAM Geographicam adornavit, addita explicatione Belgico sermone
scripta: Nunc vero in Latinum sermonem translata, et ex variis
authoribus hinc inde declarata. Noribergae. Impensis LEVINI HULSII.
M.D.XCIX.]

So expansive a mind as Raleigh's undoubtedly was, was not free from that
universal credulity which still reigns in the breasts of all men
respecting matters with which they are not personally acquainted; and
the glowing descriptions of Columbus and his followers respecting the
rich Cathay and the Spice Islands of the Indies have had so permanent a
hold upon the imagination, that even the best educated amongst us have,
in their youth, galloped over Pampas, in search of visionary
_Uspallatas_. Nor is it yet quite clear that the golden city of El
Dorado is wholly fabulous, the region in which it was said to exist not
having yet been penetrated by Science; but it soon will be, for a
steamboat is to ply up the Maranon, and Peru and Europe are to be
brought in contact, although the voyage down that mighty flood has
hitherto been a labour of several months.

The poor emigrant, for we must return to him, lands at New York. Sharks
beset him in every direction, boarding-houses and grogshops open their
doors, and he is frequently ob