AUCKLAND'S IMMIGRATION ARRANGEMENTS.

Evening Star, Issue 3299, 16 September 1873, Page 3

AUCKLAND'S IMMIGRATION ARRANGEMENTS.

The following from the Herald of the 6th inst. will throw a little light on our Auckland telegram to-day : The immigrant ship Berar arrived in our waters on Wednesday last from London. There were on board 100 male and 103 female adults, 55 male and 43 female children, besides 10 infants. These were made up of 49 married couples, having in the, aggregate 108 children, from the suckling infant to boys and girls maturing towards manhood and womanhood. On Thursday morning, between ten o’clock and mid-day, the whole of the passengers were landed on the wharf. There was no official to receive them ; none to render them any information, and all the immigrants could learn was that there were barracks in the vicinity of the city where they could be quartered. The single men found their way to the bars of the public hotels, and, we fear, also several of the single females. Towards afternoon the married couples, with their families, found their way to the barracks, and inquiring where they were to be lodged, a long room was pointed out for their reception. On either side of this room was a row of rough pine bunks, resembling in their construction enlarged candle boxes. Here, in this room, without any partitions, without as much as a pretence for dividing off the families, without the slightest regard being paid to the most ordinary requirements for observing the decencies of life, over forty married couples with one hundred and eight children were huddled together to pass the night. One dormitory for nearly two hundred souls is treatment worse than was ever dealt out to a cargo of Polynesian barbarians. The modesty of decent married women outraged, no nourishment beyond dry bread, and tea without milk for the children, and no provision made for quiet, rest, or refreshment for exhausted mothers, many of them with suckling infants, coming off a long and weary voyage. For the single females a room had been provided separate from the young men, but there was no attempt made to keep the worst of characters from holding communication with them. Yesterday raw meat and uncooked potatoes were served out to the immigrants, and only one small stove was allowed for the cooking necessary for over three hundred people, including, of course, children of both sexes. It was not until late in the afternoon that a supply of fuel came to hand, no previous order having been given for it. The matron placed in charge of so many immigrants is a feeble woman, fast approaching to her thi-ee score years and ten. The only other official was comprised in an old rear), whose duty it was to serve out the stores, and who in the very nature of the work he was called on to perform, was quits unequal to the task. Many and bitter were the complaints of the married women at being unable to obtain proper food for their children, or decent sleeping accommodation for themselves, or fuel to cook with. The surgeon of the Berar was indefatigable in his efforts to see the reasonable wants of his late passengers supplied, but all that he could do at the utmost was very little indeed, and every protest he made passed unheeded. His self-imposed work he soon discovered to be utterly unavailing. Quarters were found for the single men, but there was no one placed in authority over them. They were permitted unchecked to smoke and expectorate through the room, to scatter their bedding broadcast over the floor, to return from their perambulations in a state of semi-intoxication, and to conduct themselves in wild disorder.