Sixty years in Texas Page: 17 of 398

SIXTY YEARS IN TEXAS. 7
as the shores of old England faded away in the distance
we could see the tears in Mother's eyes, as she
called her little group of children around her and
asked the Lord to have mercy on us. No boy would
ever run away from home that had a mother like
mine. She was kind and loving, thoughtful and compassionate,
and her whole life seemed to be wrapped
up in the welfare of her children. We were nine
long weeks on the sea, sometimes violently tossed
about on the bosom of the great deep, and at other
times still and calm, with great fishes swimming
about and around our ship. We landed safely at
New Orleans; but before we reached there many of
our passengers had almost given up all hope of ever
seeing land again.
We did not remain long in New Orleans, only a
few days, and then took a steamboat for Shreveport,
and in a few days we reached that place, and before
we made the landing the negroes gathered around
and stood up in a semi-circle and sang negro songs.
That was very amusing to us. We landed and secured
quarters, but it was here our troubles began.
No railroads, no stage coaches, and there seemed to
be no way for us to get to Stewardsville, and we
could not find any one that had ever heard of the
place. Some of the people tried to persuade my
father to go to some of the Middle States. They told
him this was a wild country, inhabited only with
roving bands of wild Indians, and wild animals. But
nothing discouraged him. He was determined to go
to Stewardsville in some way. There was a man in
Shreveport from Southwest Texas that was the happy
owner of three yoke of long-horn Texas steers and
a schooner wagon, and he made my father believe
that they were the very thing for him to move to
Texas with, and they soon made a bargain. The