efore we were apprehended, striving to make our way from slavery; but
it was all in vain. Our food was parched corn, with wild fruit such as
pawpaws, percimmons, grapes, &c. We did at one time chance to find a
sweet potato patch where we got a few potatoes; but most of the time,
while we were out, we were lost. We wanted to cross the Red river but
could find no conveyance to cross in.

I recollect one day of finding a crooked tree which bent over the
river or over one fork of the river, where it was divided by an
island. I should think that the tree was at least twenty feet from
the surface of the water. I picked up my little child, and my wife
followed me, saying, "if we perish let us all perish together in the
stream." We succeeded in crossing over. I often look back to that
dangerous event even now with astonishment, and wonder how I could
have run such a risk. What would induce me to run the same risk now?
What could induce me now to leave home and friends and go to the wild
forest and lay out on the cold ground night after night without
covering, and live on parched corn?

What would induce me to take my family and go into the Red river
swamps of Louisiana among the snakes and alligators, with all the
liabilities of being destroyed by them, hunted down with blood hounds,
or lay myself liable to be shot down like the wild beasts of the
forest? Nothing I say, nothing but the strongest love of liberty,
humanity, and justice to myself and family, would induce me to run
such a risk again.

When we crossed over on the tree we supposed that we had crossed over
the main body of the river, but we had not proceeded far on our
journey before we found that we were on an Island surrounded by water
on either side. We made our bed that night in a pile of dry leaves
which had fallen from off the trees. We were much rest-broken,
wearied from hunger and travelling through briers, swamps and
cane-brakes--consequently we soon fell asleep after lying down. About
the dead hour of the night I was aroused by the awful howling of a
gang of blood-thirsty wolves, which had found us out and surrounded us
as their prey, there in the dark wilderness many miles from any house
or settlement.

My dear little child was so dreadfully alarmed that she screamed
loudly with fear--my wife trembling like a leaf on a tree, at the
thought of being devoured there in the wilderness by ferocious wolves.

The wolves kept howling, and were near enough for