The Exile Breed

by Charles Egan

  ‘What else would we do?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Well, ye might have been thinking of going down to Quebec. God knows, enough of the lads did, to their eternal sorrow. Or if I might put it this way, by the time they get to Quebec, there’d be no work for any of them. The good times are over, and they don’t even know that. They say there’s twenty or thirty million feet of logs piled up in the docks in Quebec, with no market. There’ll be damned little sawing done in Quebec this summer, I can tell you. And even less logging up the Gatineau, or anywhere else for that matter.’

  Jack looked up from the figures he had been adding.

  ‘But why would that be? Weren’t they just crying out for shanty men in ‘46? They couldn’t even get enough of us.’

  ‘Ah yes, but that was then. Now the Quebec trade has collapsed. The most of it was going over to England, and from all I hear, there’s no market for it in England anymore. They were buying millions of cubic feet of it for railroads, ships, building and all, but there’s little of that being done now. Especially railways.’

  ‘You mean…?’ Luke gasped.

  ‘Just that. It’s in all the Quebec papers. The English markets are failing, the banks won’t lend any more, England nor here. So none of the lumber you’re seeing on the St. Lawrence is going to Quebec. The most of it is following us down to New York.’

  Luke watched the sun rising above the forest-lined shore. He was thinking of the days he had worked on the railways himself. Working as a navvy on the rail gangs. Hard work, but well paid. But then Danny had gone off contracting on his own, and invited Luke to join him. But Luke knew Danny’s methods. So what of Danny now? If the railway companies were collapsing, how much work would Danny’s business have today? And what of his workers? Danny was far too tough and ruthless, but for the Mayo men who were working for him, it was better to be worked hard by Danny than starve in Mayo. He wondered what would happen to them.

  And what about Harrisburg if railway companies were collapsing?

  When they entered the United States, he was not even aware of the fact. They both staggered out of the shanty one morning. Conlon was outside, leaning against the side of the wall.

  ‘That’s Rouse’s Point over there,’ he said. ‘We’re in the United States.’

  ‘United States!’ Luke exclaimed.

  ‘None other. State of Vermont to your left. New York on the right.’

  ‘But…the border…’ Jack asked.

  ‘We passed through it a while back.’

  ‘But I thought we had to get off and slip around the border?’

  ‘That was last year. From all I hear, appears they’ve ended it now. At least for anyone coming down from the Canadas. And it’s the same with the lumber. Used to be that they had a tariff on Canadian lumber going into the United States, but they’ve given that up, and that’s why we’re heading south to New York. Some years back, it would never have been possible. Back then, the Richelieu and Champlain timber went straight to Quebec. Quebec only.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot,’ Luke commented.

  ‘Only what I hear from the fellows on the ship, and the towns along the shore. I’ve been on this journey many times before.’

  ‘So have I,’ Jack commented, ‘but only the once. Still, I’d never picked up so many facts.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Conlon said. ‘You have to keep your ears open, you know.’

  Luke reckoned Conlon was the best ganger they had ever worked under, in Quebec or the Gatineau. Apart from Farrelly, he was also the only ganger Luke had any liking for. He was tough and hardworking, and expected the same from all the other men, but often, he would join them, sometimes playing cards, more often just chatting.

  ‘Did you have a hard crossing?’ he asked Luke one night.

  ‘Damned hard,’ Luke said. ‘I was on the Centaurus.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that one. Most everyone has.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luke said. ‘Many died on the crossing. Well over a hundred.’

  ‘Were you travelling long?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘Was there anyone travelled with you.’

  ‘Not from home. But I met a fellow on the boat – Conaire he was – from the far end of Mayo. He lived, and came with us to the Gatineau.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know any more,’ Luke replied. ‘Jack and myself were put working on horses, and Conaire was sent loading and unloading supplies at the dock. We never found him when we got down again. God knows where he’s got himself to. I don’t think we’ve a chance of finding him in this land.’

  ‘Not an earthly,’ Conlon said, ‘The United States of America – it’s one hell of a big country.’

  As they passed through the lake, Luke stood at the edge of the raft, watching the shore. There were forests on the hills, stretching almost endlessly along the edge of the lake, and high into the mountains behind. Late at night, there were purple sunsets, as the sun touched the hills and mountains, its reflection shimmering across to the raft.

  ‘Some country, this,’ Jack said.

  ‘It is,’ Luke said. ‘Just like on the St. Lawrence, the Outaouais and the Gatineau. Seems to go on for ever.’

  From time to time they passed farms, interspersed by small villages.

  ‘Maybe we should take up farming?’ Jack said.

  ‘Not enough money in it.’

  ‘There might be a lot more than in County Mayo. I’d say the farms over here are more than a few acres.’

  ‘A hell of a lot more. Still, I didn’t come to this country to farm.’

  At Plattsburgh a canoe came towards the rafts. There were two men in it.

  One scrambled onto the raft. He came to Luke and Jack.

  ‘Are you fellows in charge?’ he asked, in a clear Irish accent.

  ‘No, he is,’ Jack said, pointing to Conlon.

  ‘I’m looking to cross the river. Burlington, if ye’re going that way.’

  ‘We are,’ Conlon said.

  The stranger introduced himself as Tom Lynagh, from Sligo.

  ‘Are you over long?’ Conlon asked.

  ‘Since last year only. I travelled with my wife. We were aiming to find my brother, who lives in Burlington. We arrived in this country in early August.’

  ‘A month before I arrived,’ Luke commented. ‘How was your crossing?’

  ‘In a word – dreadful. We travelled on the Larch, and a more accursed ship you never saw. Four hundred…five hundred people, God only knows how many, left Sligo on that hell-ship. Only the half of them ever got to Quebec. And you know what the strange thing was? It was a fast crossing – four weeks, I’m told, though truth to tell, I never kept track of it.’

  ‘All I know is that by the time Ben Bulben had disappeared behind us, the dying had already started. The fever ran riot through the ship. Every day, men, women and children, thrown to the sea. When it first started, they were wrapped up in canvasses – old sails cut apart, but they ran out soon enough. After that, they were just thrown overboard, naked. Their families would auction their clothes before they were thrown over – if there was any family left. Otherwise, everyone just fought over their clothes. At first it was only one or two bodies a day – by mid-Atlantic it was running at five or six. Every day. Can you imagine it? They say a quarter died on the voyage, though I’m inclined to think it was more.’

  ‘Then we arrived at Grosse Île. They took one look at the ship and quarantined it at once. The bad cases, they were left on board to die. The rest of us were taken off by boat and rowed to the fever sheds on that hell-hole of an island. And you know the one strange thing about that island – it was the most beautiful place any man could want. The smell of the pines, the lapping of the water, not that you got much of either of those when you were inside the sheds. It was still warm, it was only early August, but the inside of the sheds was like a furnace.’

  ‘I thought at first we were fine, I thought we were only being held for a quarantine period t
o see if we had fever. And then, God damn it to hell, I got it. I’ll never forget it. The savage pain, the nightmares. But lucky for me, I had had it as a child, and I was tough enough for it then, and thank God it toughened me up to have it a second time. Margaret nursed me all through it. So I lived. But when I came back to myself, the nightmare just went on. The stink of those sheds, it was something terrible. I saw men, women and children around me, raving some of them. Just lying in their beds, dead included, until someone noticed, and had the time to take them out. I don’t know how many of the ones left in the ship survived, but I know many more died in the sheds. Margaret was lucky then, she never got the fever. But at last, they took me out, and put me in another shed for getting better. So I was alive, and thankful. Then the ones of us who still lived, we were put back on the Larch and told to clear off the corpses. When we were finished that job, they started moving again and brought us to the docks at Quebec.’

  Luke threw a piece of bark into the water and watched it float into the distance.

  ‘A hard story. Not so different to my own. I was on the Centaurus, out of Liverpool. It was just the same. There’s no point in repeating it, you’ve put it so well. The ocean voyage. Grosse Île too, the lot. Then we worked in the forests for the winter.’

  ‘Tough work, I’d wager,’ Lynagh said.

  ‘It was,’ Luke said. ‘Kept us warm though. What about yourself? How did you get down to the United States from Quebec? Rough travel, was it?’

  ‘Rough enough, I’d say, though at least we didn’t freeze. Margaret and myself, we stayed a few weeks in Quebec with a fellow we’d known back in Ireland. Then we went up to Montreal in a steamboat, and stayed there a few weeks. I was lucky enough to get a few weeks work on the Lachine Lock.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said. ‘We know that one. We came by way of the Lachine.’

  ‘Ye’d know it, so. But after that, we got as far as Bytown, but then Margaret was sick with the fever. We found lodgings with a kind Irish family, and I was able to take care of her with the help of the woman of the house. Then a terrible thing happened. Margaret mended, but the woman of the house died, after Margaret infecting her. I dug a grave, and we buried her. Then we left the family and travelled further up the St. Lawrence, where I got some work on a building site. But then I caught the fever again, so we had to stay a few weeks? After that, we crossed the St. Lawrence, into the United States.’

  ‘When was that?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Oh, a few months back. Early February I’d say.’

  ‘A lot of ice then?’

  ‘Not so much. We hired a skiff to go across, but the ice was very thin. Wherever it stopped us, we just rocked the boat from side to side to break the ice, while the boatman paddled us across. From there we travelled, hitching lifts on wagons, being shaken to pieces on the corduroy roads. We’d stop off at farmhouses, when we’d enough of being shaken. I’d stay a week or two in each, working for board and lodging for the two of us, feeding the hogs and the like, while Margaret worked for the woman of the house.’

  ‘You were working without pay?’

  ‘I was,’ Lynagh replied. ‘Margaret too. But it was no great harm. There wasn’t a huge amount of work in the winter. At least we had food inside of ourselves, and that was a lot better than back home. But Margaret got fever again, and died. I buried her in a field, and I left her there. I’ve been working this past two weeks with a farmer just outside of Plattsburgh.’

  At Burlington, they stopped for supplies and went ashore. Lynagh left them there.

  ‘A rough story, he had,’ Jack commented.

  ‘Rough indeed,’ Luke commented. ‘Conaire would have silenced him soon enough.’

  ‘If Conaire were here.’

  There were many men in the street outside a building site.

  ‘All looking for work,’ one told them. ‘They’re cutting back on the railroad building here.’

  ‘I didn’t know they were building railroads around here,’ Luke said.

  ‘There’s two big ones building up country – the Central Vermont and the Vermont & Canada. You’ll soon be able to travel the whole way from Montreal to New York by train. But with all these cutbacks, it might be a while.’

  Luke was more concerned than ever. If railroad building was cutting back in Vermont, what of Pennsylvania? What of Harrisburg?

  They left Lake Champlain, entering the Champlain Canal at Whitehall, poling the cribs down to Fort Edward. Then at last – the Hudson River.

  Forty miles downstream, Conlon pointed out the entrance to the Erie Canal.

  ‘Clinton’s Ditch, they call it. Runs all the way from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Many Irish worked on that back in the 1820s and 1830s. Scotch Irish. They died in their hundreds of swamp fever.’

  Through Albany to Poughkeepsie. Then on to West Point, Tarrytown and Yonkers.

  From time to time, there was hard labour, as cribs were floated off from the main raft, and Luke and Jack had to help the other men in disentangling the cribs, or rowing them to shore.

  Once the quantities of timber had been checked at each landing, even the clerical work was very limited.

  ‘They’re only small towns,’ Conlon told them. ‘We’re keeping the most of the lumber for New York.’

  Chapter 27

  Telegraph & Connaught Ranger, March 1848:

  Our brave military are brought low indeed when they are about being encamped in our mud wall cabins to fight the fleas for the filthy blankets which cover the fever patients in these wretched hovels.

  Eleanor took out Danny’s five pound note and pinned it to the inside of her shift.

  ‘At least no one will see it,’ she told Winnie, ‘though if word got out I was carrying this amount of money, I’d never get near Knockanure.’

  It had been suggested that Michael might accompany her, but Eleanor had thought he would be needed for guarding the growing crops, so she went on her own.

  When she arrived at the Workhouse, Pat looked up in surprise.

  ‘Mother! What the devil…?’

  ‘I’m going to the Hibernian Bank, and I was hoping you might help me.’

  ‘Help you with what?’

  ‘I’m trying to set up an account.’

  ‘For yourself?’

  ‘No, for Brigid.’

  ‘For Brigid!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘and so are all the rest of us in Carrigard.’

  ‘But…But how did you get here?’

  ‘Walking. How else?’

  ‘Were you alright?’

  ‘Not so bad? I met dragoons, marching the other way. They all started whistling me. Their officer tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘A bad lot, them fellows.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. At least they thought I was worth whistling, and isn’t that something? Helps you forget all the other things you see on the road. And I can tell you, I was glad enough to see them too when I got here too. I wouldn’t have got in the gate with that crowd there.’

  She unfastened the note, and took it out.

  ‘Five pounds!’ Pat exclaimed. ‘Where the devil did you get that?’

  ‘From Danny.’

  ‘Danny!’

  ‘Maybe he’s mad too. What do you think?’

  Pat shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Fine so,’ he said. ‘I’ll go with you. They know me well there. The only way I can see of opening an account for a baby though, is to not mention her age. They’re hardly going to ask for her baptism papers, are they?’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘We’ll say she’s a minor. All that means is she’s under twenty one.’

  ‘Which she surely is.’

  Eleanor followed Pat to the front gate, where he requested two dragoons to accompany them for security. When they reached the Hibernian, Eleanor placed the five pound note on the counter.

  ‘We want to set up an account,’ she said.

 
The clerk looked at Pat. ‘Mr. Ryan. You know this lady?’

  ‘She’s my mother.’

  The clerk turned back to Eleanor.

  ‘So it will be in your name, will it?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it will be in the name of Brigid Ryan.’

  ‘A minor, not yet of age,’ Pat added.

  The beneficiary was given as Brigid Ryan of Carrigard, with Patrick Ryan and Eleanor Ryan, as authorised signatories. Then Eleanor was given the savings book for Brigid.

  Luke’s letter from the Gatineau Dock arrived in Carrigard. Michael slit it open and glanced through it.

  ‘Come on,’ Eleanor said, ‘what does it say?’

  ‘He wishes us well…Hopes conditions around may get better…Says you should not go to America…says…’

  But Winnie had already pulled the letter from him.

  ‘Let me see.’ She read rapidly through the letter. She looked to Eleanor. ‘He says he might have no fixed address in New York, and to wait until he tells us he is settled…’

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor said abruptly, ‘it would be many months yet.’

  ‘And even more for the letter to cross the ocean and then…then it’ll be too late in the year.’

  She sank her head into her hands. ‘Oh Lord, how long? How much longer must we wait?’

  ‘And no money, this time,’ Michael said. ‘We’ll still have to depend on Pat.’

  ‘Did he get your letter?’ Eleanor asked Winnie.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We should be thankful for that,’ she said. ‘To be honest with you, I never thought it would get through, and you sending it to Quebec, when he would have been up the forests.’

  ‘I knew it would arrive,’ Winnie said. ‘Sure he’s working with Gilmours, isn’t he? They’re in Quebec, and they own the forests too. I knew they’d get the letter to him.’

  ‘You’ve more of a belief in human nature than I’d have,’ Eleanor said. ‘I still think that letter was a lucky one. It had the Good Lord looking after it.’

  There were tears in Winnie’s eyes.

  ‘Whatever about the letter, it’s bad news it brought back from Luke. I’ve still to wait, and that’s the beginning and end of it.’

  Eleanor sat down beside Winnie, putting her arm around her shoulder. ‘Whisht, alanna, the time will come. It will, it will.’