The ship was in sight of Cape Ray on the southwest point of Newfoundland, a high mountain covered with snow. However, even as the rain cleared, she again retired to her berth feeling unwell and shivering with cold. “I have missed the opportunity for again seeing land though I have not seen any for the last thirty days.”28 The next day they passed Magdalan Island and a high outcropping of rock called Bird Island. Markerly observed that huge flocks of seafowl nested there and raised their young in this very secure place. Perhaps in her mind she contrasted that security with the doubts concerning the welfare of her infant grandson. She also noted large pods of whales called “finners” which spouted and played near the vessel. Here again in nature she witnessed a joyful family blessed with health as opposed to her own.
Nature became more cooperative the following day as the weather cleared and they entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and approached the island of Aveticosti with its lighthouse. After passing this seventy-mile long island, they came to Cape Jaspian, which is near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. There they picked up a French Canadian pilot who would guide them up the river to the quarantine facilities on Grosse Island. Their guide informed them that they would dock in about three days, and she appeared concerned that he only got home to his wife and children about once a month. Once more, this strong but sensitive woman displayed a deep sense of family affiliation.29
True to his word, the pilot brought them into the quarantine headquarters on Grosse Island on May 21, and doctors ordered all the passengers to go ashore for physical examinations. The immigrants were also required to launder all of their clothing and the ship's linens. Fortunately, the illness on board the ship had consisted primarily of seasickness, sparing the passengers contagious diseases like typhus, typhoid, or cholera. Although Markerly grudgingly acknowledged the necessity for these sanitation procedures, she had a lesser opinion for the security measures in place. She observed that the soldiers garrisoned there served “…no other purpose under heaven than to take a few more pounds out of John Bull's pockets.”30 Numerous English emigrants took issue with many of the British government's policies, especially taxation, and Lucy's poetry addressed this.
I'll go where the workman is paid for his labour
Where taxes are few, and where tythes are unknown,
Where no one desposteth the goods of his neighbor
But rests in contentment enjoying his own...31
As previously noted, this English widow had operated a seven-acre plot with her husband, Samuel Markerly, near the village of Fleet, Lincolnshire. Given the size of this operation, even under the best of circumstances, profits would have been marginal. Since the land had been in the family for several generations, it was quite possible that yields diminished as soil quality degraded. The flyleaves of the books in her private library, which she brought to America, mentioned many family members going into service.32 This supports the contention that the Markerly youth had to augment the family income as wage earners. Flat prices for grain and increased taxes forced many small agriculturalists into dire economic circumstances. The lure of cheap lands on the expanding American frontier provided a strong incentive for English farmers tilling marginal soils to risk moving their families to the United States, thus maintaining their class status as independent yeomen.33
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