Father took with him only my sister
Sarah (thirteen years of age), myself (eleven), and brother David
(nine), leaving my eldest sister, Margaret, and the three youngest of
the family, Daniel, Mary, and Anna, with mother, to join us after a
farm had been found in the wilderness and a comfortable house made to
receive them.
In crossing the Atlantic before the days of steamships, or even the
American clippers, the voyages made in old-fashioned sailing-vessels
were very long. Ours was six weeks and three days. But because we had
no lessons to get, that long voyage had not a dull moment for us boys.
Father and sister Sarah, with most of the old folk, stayed below in
rough weather, groaning in the miseries of seasickness, many of the
passengers wishing they had never ventured in "the auld rockin'
creel," as they called our bluff-bowed, wave-beating ship, and, when
the weather was moderately calm, singing songs in the evenings,--"The
Youthful Sailor Frank and Bold," "Oh, why left I my hame, why did I
cross the deep," etc.
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