. . . on the 18th day of April 1857, bid our last farewell to dear old Denmark. We arrived in Grimsby 8 days after, and after resting a day or so, crossed England [p.31] to Liverpool where we embarked on the sailship Westmoreland, and seven weeks after landed in Philadelphia harbor. The time crossing the sea was spent in a quite pleasant way when not too seasick, which we escaped pretty well. We danced on the deck. The captain would often amuse himself by throwing nice small cakes and see us scramble to see who would get them. We were divided into four wards on the ship and a president for each. We held general meetings as also meetings in wards. We was often amused by watching the big fish or animals rolling in the waters. Our worst trouble was the appetite. Father was the only one that could eat the sea biscuits so when we reached America we had lots of them. I think we sold them when we got ashore.

It was very awkward for us to do our trading as we could not speak English, but we got along and bought quite a few things in this town. I got a new suit of clothes. We soon was on the railroad speeding west and arrived at Iowa City 7 or 8 days after we left Philadelphia. Here we was very busy for a time. I don't remember but not more than a week or 10 days, and then we started still west with our wonderful (at least to us) new outfit. Many of us had never seen an ox before, and now we would be privileged to look at them every [p.32] day for a long time. The scene to be witnessed the first few days can scarcely be portrayed. One must be there themselves & take observations, but suffice to say it was indeed comical, as well as somewhat sorrowful, for driving oxen must, like everything else, be learned and it took some time and sometimes they would be piled up on top of each other in spite of the efforts of men on both sides of them for many of them had never been worked. Hence anyone who knows anything about oxen will easily wonder how they could get along, but we did get along anyway and no one was hurt. And in 3 weeks we arrived at Florence or Omaha which is 6 miles apart, here we found a handcart company and with them we traveled most of the way to Utah often camping together for night. Up till now our oxen had not been unyoked since leaving Iowa. The reason was the captain was afraid we couldn't get them yoked up again, but now we started to yoke them up and unyoke them every day. We stayed at Florence a short time and fitted out for our long journey across the plains and after 9 or 10 weeks' travel arrived in Salt Lake City September 15th. . . . [p. 33]

BIB: Sorensen, Isaac [Journal], (Special Collections and Archives, 920, So 68), pp. 31-33, (Utah State University).
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