The circumstance which destroyed her rest happened in
this way:--Some short time before, a poor miserable woman entered the
cabin, and asked leave to rest herself for a few moments. She got
permission to do so. She lay down, but never rose again. She died in an
hour, and in this miserable hovel of six feet square, the body remained
four days before the wretched occupant could get any person to remove
it. It is not much to be wondered at that she had lost her rest.
"I could," says Captain Caffin, "in this manner take you through thirty
or more cottages that we visited, but they, without exception, were all
alike--the dead and the dying in each; and I could tell you more of the
truth of the heartrending scene, were I to mention the lamentations and
bitter cries of each of those poor creatures, on the threshold of death.
Never in my life have I seen such wholesale misery, nor could I have
thought it so complete. All that I have stated above," he concludes, "I
have seen with my own eyes, and can vouch for the truth of. And I feel I
cannot convey by words the impression left on my mind of this awful
state of things. I could tell you also of that which I could vouch for
the truth of, but which I did not see myself, such as bodies half eaten
by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr.
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