Читать книгу In an Unknown Prison Land. An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with jottings out and home онлайн

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It was on the fifth night out from Southampton that the threatening shadow of the American Custom House began to fall over the company in the saloon.

One could see ladies talking nervously together. The subject was the one most dear to the female heart; but the pleasure of talking about “things” was mingled—at least in the hearts of the uninitiated—with an uneasiness which, in not a few cases, amounted to actual fear; for that evening certain forms had been distributed by the purser, and these forms contained questions calculated to search out the inmost secret of every dress-basket and Saratoga trunk on board.

By the time you had filled in the blanks, if you had done it honestly—as, of course, no one except myself did—you had not only given a detailed list of your wardrobe, but you had enumerated in a separate schedule every article that you had bought new in Europe.

You were graciously permitted to possess one hundred dollars’, or, say, twenty pounds’ worth of personal effects. If you had more than that you were treated as a commercial traveller importing dry goods, and had to pay duty in case you sold them again, and thus came into competition with the infant industries of Uncle Sam.