On entering the port of New York, the longing gaze of the passenger rests on a lai'ge wooden erection somewhat like a rotunda or temporary circus. This unprepossessing place bears the imposing title of “Castle Garden,” and here all emigrants first step on shore. While passing through the barriers of this place, the stranger unacquainted with the facts would form but a poor idea of its real importance, as the locale of a national institution under the control and management of the Commissioners of Emigration.

Previous to 1847, the emigrants who landed at New York were put ashore wherever the vessel in which they came was berthed. When it is known that the space occupied by the shipping in the port extends over twenty miles, some idea of the trouble and inconvenience the emigrants must have suffered from such an arrangement may be formed. The discomforts, however, arising from being landed in out-of-the-way places were of small account compared with others of a more serious nature to which they were exposed. Those among them who had escaped being victimized by the heartless but thriving harpies in Liverpool were almost certain to be robbed by the same class of scoundrels in New York. Whichever way the emigrant turned his face after landing, he was sure to be surrounded with a network of villany and deception. Before leaving the vessel the boarding-house runners seized his luggage, by force if necessary, and dragged him off to their infamous dens. These fellows were a lawless race in whom every feeling of honour and honesty was dead, and the boarding-house keepers themselves were no better.