There were quite a large number of emigrants aboard, many of them
newly married couples, and the advantages of the different parts of
the New World they expected to settle in were often discussed. My
father started with the intention of going to the backwoods of Upper
Canada. Before the end of the voyage, however, he was persuaded that
the States offered superior advantages, especially Wisconsin and
Michigan, where the land was said to be as good as in Canada and far
more easily brought under cultivation; for in Canada the woods were so
close and heavy that a man might wear out his life in getting a few
acres cleared of trees and stumps. So he changed his mind and
concluded to go to one of the Western States.

On our wavering westward way a grain-dealer in Buffalo told father
that most of the wheat he handled came from Wisconsin; and this
influential information finally determined my father's choice. At
Milwaukee a farmer who had come in from the country near Fort
Winnebago with a load of wheat agreed to haul us and our formidable
load of stuff to a little town called Kingston for thirty dollars. On
that hundred-mile journey, just after the spring thaw, the roads over
the prairies were heavy and miry, causing no end of lamentation, for
we often got stuck in the mud, and the poor farmer sadly declared that
never, never again would he be tempted to try to haul such a cruel,
heart-breaking, wagon-breaking, horse-killing load, no, not for a
hundred dollars. In leaving Scotland, father, like many other
homeseekers, burdened himself with far too much luggage, as if all
America were still a wilderness in which little or nothing could be
bought. One of his big iron-bound boxes must have weighed about four
hundred pounds, for it contained an old-fashioned beam-scales with a
complete set of cast-iron counterweights, two of them fifty-six pounds