Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

‘You wished me to call at No. 1, Cornhill, and ask Mr. Carter¹ for some more leads for the paper. This I intended to have done: but, after wandering about 2 or 3 hours, and enquiring of 20 different persons, (none of whom, however, would take the trouble to show me,) I was forced to give up in despair. Being totally unacquainted with Boston, and never there before, I got lost several times in my travels—so that all was perplexity. Indeed, I felt truly homesick in being one short day in Boston.—I was seasick but about 15 minutes on my passage.’

The voyage was a tedious one of fourteen days, the ship encountering ‘very boisterous weather and considerable head winds,’ as the same letter describes. ‘The evening we sailed from Boston, a very heavy gale of wind tore our foretopsail, maintopsail, and jibs, besides renderinger other considerable damage. We were thus obliged to put in at Hyana Heads, for the purpose of repairing our² tattered sails, where we remained two days, the winds and the weather conspiring against us.’

Of this storm, however, Lloyd knew nothing at the moment, for, wearied by his day's adventures in Boston, he went on board the vessel, and, after wondering how she could ever be worked out from the other shipping at the wharf, stretched himself in his berth and slept so soundly that he was unconscious of everything until Hyannis was reached, the next day. There he went ashore with some of his fellow-passengers, who decided to remain on land overnight rather than go back to the ship in such rough water, and when he undertook to return alone, he failed to get alongside the vessel, and wind and tide swept him and his boat a mile or more down the shore. He narrowly escaped being swamped, but finally managed to land, and trudged back to the town. In Chesapeake Bay a terrific thunderstorm was encountered, but a landing was finally made in Baltimore on the 5th of July. His meeting with his mother³ was most affecting. To Mr. Allen he wrote:

‘You must imagine my sensations on beholding a dearly⁴ beloved mother, after an absence of seen years. I found her ’