the long looked for boat returned, loaded with provision, which saved us
from starvation and gave us strength to pursue our labor.




CHAPTER V.

INCIDENTS AT SODUS BAY.

About this time two slaves who were laboring in the forest, instead of
returning to their cabin as was expected, got lost, and wandered eight
days in the dense forest without provision, except what they could procure
from roots and the bark of trees. Great exertion was made to find them;
guns were fired, horns blown, and shouts raised, but all to no purpose.
Finally, we gave them up, supposing they had starved to death or had been
killed by wild beasts. One of them was an elderly man, named Benjamin
Bristol, and the other, Edmund Watkins, a lad of about eighteen years of
age. They wandered in an easterly direction, a distance of some sixty or
seventy miles, through an unbroken wilderness, vainly trying to find their
way home. On the eighth day, to their inexpressible joy, they came out on
the shore of Lake Ontario, near Oswego; but young Watkins was so
completely exhausted that he declared himself incapable of further
exertion, and begged to be left to his fate. Bristol, however, who chewed
tobacco, which it was supposed kept him from sinking so low as his
companion, took him on his back, and carried him home, which they reached
in a famished state and reduced to skeletons. All were thankful for the
preservation of their lives, and, with the best we could do for them,
they soon recruited and became strong as ever.