all the hope I had of ever reaching shore.

I saw the Captain on deck looking wishfully toward the land, while the
white-caps broke fearfully on our deck. The passengers were in a terrible
state of consternation. Some said we gained a little headway; others said
we did not. The most awful terror marked nearly every face. Some wept,
some prayed, some swore and a few looked calm and resigned. I was trying
to read my fate in other faces when an English lady, who came on the
canal boat with us, and who had remained in the cabin up to this, time,
rushed on deck, wringing her hands and crying at the top of her voice,
"We shall be lost! we shall be lost! oh! oh! oh! I have crossed the
Atlantic Ocean three times, and it never commenced with this! We shall be
lost! oh! oh! oh!"

One horse that stood on the bow of the boat died from the effects of the
storm. Our clothes and bedding were all drenched, and to make our
condition still more perilous, the boat was discovered to be on fire.
This was kept as quiet as possible. I did not know that it was burning,
until after it was extinguished; but I saw father, with others, carrying
buckets of water. He said the boat had been on fire and they had put it
out. The staunch boat resisted the elements; ploughed her way through and
landed us safely at Detroit.

Some years after our landing at Detroit, I saw the steamboat "Michigan"
and thought of the perilous time we had on her coming up Lake Erie. She
was then an old boat, and was laid up. I thought of the many thousand
hardy pioneers she had brought across the turbulent lake and landed
safely on the shore of the territory whose name she bore.

But where, oh where "are the six hundred!" that came on her with us? Most