Our Boat That Sank

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I will speak of an occurrence which came later because I shall not have occasion to speak of it later. One time, when we were moving up - taking land and send our goods by boat, we hired two boats with two men each, loaded our foods and sent them on their way. Then we started by land expecting our goods to reach there about the same time. We reached there and asked for our goods but they had not come. Day after day we waited,and still they did not come and still we waited and wondered. At last, some one got up the courage to tell us what they had known all the time that after they left us, the boat men had received the brilliant idea of putting all the goods into one boat, thus getting pay for two boats while using only one. The result was that the boat, being overloaded, sank to the bottom with all our goods! We were kept in ignorance of this because they will never tell bad news if they can help it.

We recovered some of the goods later but everything was a complete wreck - not worth carrying home. I still have visions of our books - all we had, completely soaked through, and for months spread open on the floor trying to dry out. They may still be there, for all I know. I hope they got dry, Our furniture faired likewise, came all to pieces, and our clothes were all mildewed, and unfit for use. The boatmen were very much offended because they did not receive full pay for their trouble. But all this was on a later trip and not the one I started to tell about. As a rule, we accompanied our goods by boat so there was not usually an opportunity for such an accident to happen. In fact, it could not happen again for we lost all we had. But, as I said this was at a later time. This first trip, as I remember, was in October. I failed to mention that Brother David family accompanied us on this trip to get us introduced to our new home and work.