Saints by Sea. We left Liverpool or I should have said was going to leave Liverpool on the ship Helious [Helios] but after we had embarked and had been on board two nights during a storm she broke loose from the anchor in the river and run aground and the government officers would no let her got to sea until she had been inspected on the dry docks so we was put ashore again and had to stay one month. She was advertised to sail on the twentieth of December 1854 but we did not get to sail until some time in January
1855. We then sailed in ship called the Charles Buck. And as there was [p.8] some dispute between our shipping agent Brother Franklin D. Richards and the captain of the "Helious" we did not get the provisions that was provided for us. And the consequence was that before we got half over the sea our provisions began to run short and we had rather hard times but then it was only a prelude to prepare us for what was before us. Suffice it to say we was greatly blessed of the Lord in our journey and arrived all safe at New Orleans some time in March. From here we took steamer to Saint Louis up the Mississippi River. We was eleven days on the river between Mew Orleans and St. Louis we stayed here some eight days and met with some of our old friends who were very kind I will just mention some of their names, formost among them was Alexander Dow who has since come to Utah and apostatized and gone back, and Brothers James & Thomas Adamson from the Boreland who were very kind. James never came to Utah but Thomas gathered that same year and is now a faithful man of God. From there we took steam boat for Atchison in Kansas. We was nine days from Saint Louis to Atchison. There was then but few inhabitants in this part of the west there was only some three houses in the town. We moved out some six miles from the river and took up a section of land, that is to say the brethren who were in charge of the emigration for that year. And we the emigrants commenced to build houses and fence and plow the land. We stayed here until the second day of July when we was organized in to a company with Richard Ballantyne as captain. William Glover as captain of the guard. While we was camped here cholera broke out in the camp but through the blessings of the Lord there was not many died. There was eleven persons to each wagon to travel across the plains and there being nine of our own family there was only two persons traveling in our wagon. The cattle and wagons belonging to the P. E. Emigration Company and the emigrants paying so much for their use. Therefore there was in our wagon my father & mother with their family consisting of myself and wife, I being the [p.9] only one married at the time. My brothers James, William & Robert with my sisters Mary Ann & Janet there was also a young woman by the name of Jane Pilkington and a motherless girl by the name of Eliza [Elizabeth] Pinder. Our traveling from the Missouri River was not then as it is now with the exceptions of the wagon tracks that former companies had made. It was a trackless desert, we saw the first herd of buffalo the second day after we started and if I mind right killed one the third day. We would average about fifteen miles per day and we saw herds of buffalo and deer almost every day and when we got up on the Platte River the whole country seemed alive with them. We killed what we wanted for use but never wantingly destroyed any. Our journey across the plains and through the mountains was very labourous and wearying. And I have many times thought there was no comparison between us and ancient Isreal for with them the Lord preserved their shoes and clothes but with us when we arrived in the valley of Salt Lake the most of our clothes were wore done [PROBABLY MEANING, down] and our shoes wore off our feet. We arrived in the valley on the 25th of September 1855 almost wore out men and women of us but full of hope and full of the spirit of our holy religion.[p.10]
BIB: McFarland, Archibald. Reminiscences (Ms 5333), pp. 8-10. (CHL)
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