. . . After waiting two weeks at Liverpool we went aboard the sailing vessel Rochester bound for New York. It was on that ship I first saw Brigham Young. He used to come through the crowded mass of people in the hold speaking kindly and fatherly to us. Everyone aboard the ship worshiped and obeyed him. I could see why father had been unable to resist his appeal. He was a huge man, broad shouldered and stout. With a masterful air he stood among his followers. Most of the time during that journey he spent preaching to us. His was a firm belief in the direct revelation of this New World religion. So sincere and honest was he in his belief that he inspired the same sincerity and honesty in the belief of his followers.

Most of the passengers were sick during the voyage. Mother was so ill that she had to be moved from the steerage to a small cabin on deck and, although she did not retain the little food she tried to eat, she survived the journey. Little baby Joseph died in brother John's arms. I was not seasick but the skipper showered me with so many nuts and raisins that I have never been able to eat them since. We stayed in New York a short time and then took a steamer up the Hudson for Albany. From there we went by canal boat to Lockport where father got a job at his tailoring trade. While John and I were playing on the boats there, I fell into the canal. I came up between a barge and the landing and crawled out with a resolve not to try boating again. But we were [p.491] at it the very next day and while playing with a piece of a log John fell in. He kept grabbing for the log but it turned with each grab and worked farther and farther out towards the middle of the canal. I yelled wildly for help and a man came running out of a warehouse, jumped in and saved John, who was a pretty wet boy but not as scared as I was. He told us that he wasn't afraid of drowning because the wooden Indian in Liverpool had told him that the Indians in America would kill him. We soon afterwards moved on to Buffalo where we took a steamer over the Lakes for Chicago, a mere village of four thousand then. We camped with our luggage near the wharf. I remember Mother placing three of our chests side by side to raise our beds out of the reach of snakes.

We hired a teamster to take our goods from there to the Illinois River. The Illinois Railroad was just being built then. While crossing the new grade I fell off the side of the wagon box where I was sitting, against father's strict orders, and landed right under the hind wheel. A large boulder lifted the wheel so that it passed over without hardly bruising me, but I was a good boy for the rest of that trip. We took a steamer down the Illinois River to the Mississippi and up that river to Nauvoo. . . . [p.492]

BIB: Quayle, Thomas, Our Pioneer Heritage vol. 16 (1973) pp. 491-92. (CHL)
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