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 Post Clearances - Influence Abroad - A Report from Canada

Canadian Influence


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Report from Canada
 


From the Inverness Advertiser. 23rd October 1849:
(Compare and contrast this with a report from Australia .

Story and Fate of the Tyree Emigrants.

We some weeks ago called the attention of our readers to the sufferings and privations endured by the poor exiles the Western isles and coast that had been cleared during the early part of the present season, we this day submit to our readers a communication from a correspondent in Canada which fills up the background of a dark and terrible picture.

Himself a Highlander and a native of Tain, his feelings of compassion were deeply stirred on behalf of the unhappy exiles, and whatever was done in Hamilton for the alleviation of the unspeakable miseries was accomplished mainly if not entirely through his personal exertions.

He had therefore the best opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with the actual facts of the case and his high character is sufficient guarantee for the truthfulness of his statements upon which therefore full of implicit reliance may be placed.

He confirms his exposition to the case of the emigrants from Tyree and Mull as exported by his Grace the Duke of Argyles utterly deplorable as their condition had become vastly ameliorated by the fact of their being forwarded at Government expense from Quebec to Hamilton, the head of the navigation.

They suffered much during their transit losing many lives from the prevailing epidemic but it was only at Hamilton that their sufferings reached a crisis. There the government succour totally abandoned them. The emigrant sheds already crowded with the miserable Irish could afford them no shelter huddled together on the wharfs or on the commons betwixt the bays and the city.

Old and young women and children the feeble and the robust they lay without shelter exposed to the scorching beams of a Canadian summer sun and the cold damp dews of a Canadian night. On the first night thirteen, on the second eight were seised with cholera in all forty eight were sent to hospital labouring under the epidemic and up to the time at which he wrote us NOT SO MUCH AS ONE HAD LEFT IT ALIVE.

 
It was in this desperate crisis that our correspondent stepped forward to their relief accompanied by a solitary friend he went from house to house soliciting subscriptions and raised enough to preserve them.

For a few days from starvation he did more, he prevailed with the city authorities though heavily burdened with debt to forward them (at an expense of £150) another stage on their journey to the village of Fergus forty five miles from the city of Hamilton wagons were provided which forwarded them in separate detachments on the return of teams one of the Waggoner’s told him that three belonging to his load two men and a girl had died on the way and the bodies were thrown into the holes by the way-side amid the heart rending cries of the distracted relatives.

The wretched remnant lingered on at Fergus until the spring they have not so much as an axe to penetrate into the primeval forests. No food nor a single necessary for a life in the bush. What a fraction of the hundreds who but a few months ago were driven forth full of health and life are likely. to muster at the dawn of spring Not one believe for every two who will have sunk into silent rest of the grave.

It is not the first time that earlier the initial horrors of a Highland Clearing have all been well and fearfully depicted. But we hardly know if in any case its ultimate and fearful issues beyond the Atlantic have ever before in any case been so clearly brought to light.

The victims have fallen unchecked of and unheeded. We do not know with what feeling the Duke of Argyle will pursue the sad record of his handy work but this we know that not for all the glories of his ancient coronet nor his graces broad lands would assume his responsibility in connection with it in our apprehension the fearful guilt of blood lies at his door and before god and his country we summon him to answer for it!