Unto a Good Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

over, the brig Charlotta of Karlshamn could at last discharge her living cargo on the pier near Castle Garden in New York Harbor.
    NOTE
    1 . Not until 1855 was an official reception station for immigrants opened at Castle Garden.

II
    BATTERY PARK
    After seventy days at sea, the seekers of new homes were again on solid ground—though the restlessness of the Atlantic Ocean remained a while within them. As they set foot once more on the trustworthy, immovable earth, they were well satisfied to part with those great masses of water which the Creator on the Third Day had called Sea, and they blessed in their hearts that dry part which He had called Earth. They gave thanks to the Lord God Who in His mercy had helped the brittle planks to carry them over the terrifying depths to the longed-for harbor.
    On an outjutting tongue of land in the East River stood Castle Garden, the old fort, now transformed into an amusement place, and near by, separated from the river piers by a broad walk, Battery Park spread its greenery. This piece of wooded land so near the harbor resounded daily with heavy peasant tramping and foreign tongues. The Old World people, having passed through the portals of the New World, found here their first resting place on American soil. Battery Park was to the immigrants a cool and shaded grove on their day of landing.
    Here they sat down and refreshed themselves in the comforting shade of spreading elms and linden trees, here rested side by side men, women, children, and aged ones, surrounded by their possessions—chests, baskets, bags, and bundles, filled with essential belongings. As many knapsacks and bundles as they had been able to carry they had clutched in their hands when walking down the gangplank, holding them so tight that their knuckles whitened, and their cheeks reddened with fear lest hustling foreigners snatch their belongings from them. Never during the whole journey would they leave these important possessions out of sight, these inseparable bed companions during the transport across the ocean.
    Rough, broad-shouldered peasants, their faces marked by all the seasons of the year, stood here with hands behind their backs, their eyes appraising the new land. On their bodies hung heavy wadmal clothes, wrinkled and baggy. (These woolen garments—such splendid protection against the bitter cold of the North Sea—were now drenched with sweat and a burden to their wearers on America’s sunny shores.) There was a constrained lust for action in these men’s hard muscles and sinews; their bodies were power restrained. Crowded in narrow ship’s space for many weeks, their hands had had no chores to perform. They had arrived on a new continent anxious to resume accustomed duties, their hands eager to hold the familiar ox thongs and plow handles. Their hands possessed much knowledge, acquired from childhood, inherited through centuries. When now again they stood on solid ground, they felt the lust for work spring up after the painful time of inactivity. But yet a while must their forced rest last, yet a while must they carry their hands behind their backs.
    Mothers sat leaning against tree trunks in the park, feeding their babies from the breast; the women emptied their scrawny breasts without filling the stomachs of their babies. The milk gave out long before the babies’ hunger, and the little ones cried and fretted, irritated by the heat and discomfort of the heavy woolen garments in which they were bundled. And the mothers rocked their children on their knees—mother-love’s cradle, the softest and most comfortable cradle on earth—and tried to lull them to sleep. But the babies whimpered, they wanted to stay awake; now that their eyes saw for the first time the land their parents had chosen for them, it seemed as if they wanted to take in everything; this was the land where they were to grow up, the land that was to be their home.
    A five-year-old boy, wrapped in a coat that hung to his ankles,