The Helena Independent

IMPRISONED WITH A PLAGUE.

The Horrors of Cholera In an Emigrant Ship.

Patrick Murray, who came to America in the steerage of the Virginia in 1863, tells this story: "We were at sea eight days when the cholera broke out. It was the black cholera, and it reached the ship with the first sunshine after a three days' storm.

"During the storm, which was violent beyond description, we kept huddled together in the hold of the ship. We had not been on deck 10 minutes after the weather cleared when the passengers began tumbling over with a strange ailment, which afterward proved to be cholera. We had on board with us a quack doctor, who was working his way to America. He had little ability and less medicine to battle with the pestilence.

"The ship was crowded almost beyond its capacity, and the plague had full sway. It swept through the ship like a deadly cyclone, and the dead and dying were scattered about like flies on a poisoned plate. The unfortunates would tumble over, and many of them would die in 10 minutes. Others would linger for two or three days, and some of them even recovered. But from the minute the disease struck the ship there was an unceasing, distressing wail that went up from the helpless sufferers.

Without friends, without medicine, without the consolation of a minister and even without hope, the victims yielded to the scourge as a suicide plunges into eternity.

"I was not stricken with the disease. I was constantly among the dead and dying, and I had positively no hope of escaping. I went about doing all I could for the afflicted ones, and every hour my surprise increased that I had not been stricken. While waiting for the disease to attack me, I really became reconciled to the fate that seemed sure to overtake me, and when occasionally I would get a little sleep I would wake up disappointed to find myself all right. You can scarcely imagine how completely abandoned one feels under such circumstances. Drifting about like a lost soul, with nothing but death and horrible distress in sight, I could have died then with absolute abandon. We used to drop the dead overboard without ceremony.

"But relief and hope came to us after reaching New York. We were not allowed to land. We were driven back to Sandy Hook, where we were held in quarantine for six weeks. Medical attention never failed, and all the possible comforts were sent to us every morning. The afflicted were taken from our ship to an old gunboat which was anchored out in the ocean, and there, for the first time since the cholera struck us, did we begin to appear anxious to live."