. . . Sometime in the month of May 1862, when the emigrants started on their journey, we left London in the morning. I remember leaving father, mother, brothers and sister. Did I cry? No. I was going to Zion. Did my sister cry? I don't remember that she did. We got to Liverpool in good time, and got in the ship. It was a three-masted sailing ship. It had three decks, the top deck where you could look over the side and see the ocean, then you went down a trap door to the second deck, this was like [p.290] a large room with berths built all around the walls of the ship, they were the places you slept in. There were three tiers, one of them above the other. Then there was another trapdoor that let you down into another deck. When you got on the floor of the third deck, it was so dark that you could not see for awhile till your eyes got accustomed to the gloom. On the third floor were more berths all around, and some lanterns lit so you could manage to see around. The berths that Brother King and family and we two children had were down in this lowest deck. Our berth was in the upper tier. We got settled. On the ship what you paid for your passage included your board. The rations consisted of sea biscuits that were as large as a modern sized plate and were hollow. There was salt beef, pork, rice, split peas, oatmeal, vinegar, mustard, black tea, brown sugar, fresh water and a very little flour, for there was no way of baking bread. The flour was to make a pie or pudding if you wanted to. Brother King used to take the meat and the food to the cooking galley and get it cooked. Lots of the people had some extra food stuffs with them such as raisins, currants, and other fancy stuff. Brother King used to make gruel of the oatmeal and cook other things. The reason he had to do this was because his wife and his sisters were sick and his mother was old. My sister and I were not sick. We would get two of those big sea biscuits each with a piece of boiled beef and pork with some mustard and vinegar on it, and go up on the upper deck and sit on the coils of rope enjoying ourselves. Then we would prowl around poking our noses into every place we got a chance. We managed to find out where the captain's cook was cooking and he wanted to know if we could sing. We said Yes, so he asked us to sing for him, which we did. He gave us some nice fresh meat, broth, bread, cake and many other good things. We took some of it to Sister King for she was so sick. The only place I was frightened was when we had to go to the closet, there was just a straight stick across and of course you could see the ocean. How I did cling to my little sister when she was on that bar, for it was a large enough place to let a grown person down, let alone children. We liked to go look over the side of the ship and see the porpoises showing their heads out of the water and watch the ships go by. We had an awful storm, how the ship did rock. It seemed like it would tip over, and how the cans and things did tumble around; but we got to New York all right. We stopped in a place called Castle Garden, it was a large building. I have read since that it had been built for an Opera House and used for that, and the great singer Jenny Lind sang there. We stayed a few days at Castle Garden then we got on the cars, and how hungry we were. We bought bread from men who came on the cars with bread to sell and it was like eating wind, there was nothing to it or substantial about it. How we did wish for some of the sea biscuits to fill up on. We rode on the cars a while then [p.291] we got on steamboats and were packed in them like sardines in a can. Thirsty, oh how thirsty, we were on the Missouri River. When they would dip up a bucketful of water and let it settle, it was half sand, and how warm it was.

Finally we got to Florence where we stayed two weeks while they were getting the oxen and wagons ready. . . .

. . . We got started on the plains, and there were a lot of us, I don't know how many . . . .

. . . We left England in May and got to Utah in October [1862]. . . . [p.292]

BIB: Larrabee, Caroline E. W. W., [Autobiography], Our Pioneer Heritage, Comp. By Kate B. Carter, vol. 17 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1974) pp. 290-292. (CHL)
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