Read Online Faith and Betrayal by Sally Denton - Free Book Online
Authors: Sally Denton
Tags: Fiction
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with Sister Thorn, the wife of a fellow elder, and this “deeply grieved” her husband and shocked the Saints who had entrusted their spiritual salvation to this man. “We all hope he will soon be able to forget her entirely,” Jean Rio wrote of the aggrieved Elder Thorn. Then, three of the more respected women in the company were excommunicated for “levity of behavior with some of the officers of the ship.”
Now the Caribbean torridity blasted the passengers, with “nearly half of our company affected more or less with the prickly heat.” The ship’s captain provided a large tub of fresh water for “dipping” the children, who were covered from head to toe with an irritating rash. “The men amuse themselves after another fashion,” Jean Rio wrote. “They put on a thin pair of drawers and pour buckets of water over each other.”
On the evening of March 10 they caught their first glimpse of a stationary, revolving light. Passing within three miles of what Jean Rio identified as the Island of Great and Little Isaacs and Green Turtle Island—now-defunct names for islands off the coast of Cuba—they celebrated the first sight of civilization they had had in nearly ten weeks. The lighthouse was situated on an island forty miles long, an uninhabited stretch except for a harbor where dozens of small schooners were anchored.
“Passed Buch Island, also Double-Headed Shot,” Jean Rio wrote in her diary on March 12. “This is not exactly an island but a long chain of rocks.” The ship entered the Gulf of Mexico two days later, and from that point forward the climate was “immensely hot.” She counted seventeen sailboats of various sizes, elegant against the aquamarine bay. “I have often wondered and read of the beauty of Italian skies, but I am sure they cannot exceed in splendor that which, at this moment, arches over the Gulf of Florida, or Mexico, as it is mostly determined.”
The next day, the crew measured the fresh water on board the ship and calculated that there remained a twenty-three-day supply. Despite the delays on the open sea, the company was well supplied, and there was ample water for the final jaunt across the gulf to New Orleans. Jean Rio was taken with the scenery and the fact that they had almost arrived, and she refused to succumb to the pessimism and apprehension infecting many on board. “At seven in the evening a violent squall came on,” she wrote, “driving most of the passengers below. Myself, with a few others, remained on deck, bidding defiance to the rain for the sake of enjoying the night of lightning which was very beautiful, seeming to illuminate one half of the horizon at once.” Even though the night was as rough as “when skirting the Bay of Biscay,” she stayed up to watch the light show. When the rest of her family fell prey to seasickness, she remained absorbed in the momentous occasion. “To my astonishment,” she wrote upon awakening the following morning, “the sun was rising on our starboard now,” and the water was “a perfect mirror.”
At noon on March 18, a steamship came out to meet the boat and pull it in to anchor at the island of Belize. “A boat has come alongside us loaded with oysters, which have found a ready market,” she wrote. The houses in the village were reflected perfectly in the water. “There is a small schooner lying at anchor just by the landing place, and every rope and block in her rigging is seen reversed exactly as if standing on an immense looking glass.”
The next morning a steamer took the
George W. Bourne
in tow, pulling the battered but intact vessel 110 miles up the Mississippi River to New Orleans. “America at last!” Jean Rio wrote upon arrival in the city two days later.
To describe the scenery on each side of this mighty stream needs a better pen than mine. No description that I have ever read has done it anything like justice. Sugar and cotton plantations abound. The houses of the planters are built in
Now the Caribbean torridity blasted the passengers, with “nearly half of our company affected more or less with the prickly heat.” The ship’s captain provided a large tub of fresh water for “dipping” the children, who were covered from head to toe with an irritating rash. “The men amuse themselves after another fashion,” Jean Rio wrote. “They put on a thin pair of drawers and pour buckets of water over each other.”
On the evening of March 10 they caught their first glimpse of a stationary, revolving light. Passing within three miles of what Jean Rio identified as the Island of Great and Little Isaacs and Green Turtle Island—now-defunct names for islands off the coast of Cuba—they celebrated the first sight of civilization they had had in nearly ten weeks. The lighthouse was situated on an island forty miles long, an uninhabited stretch except for a harbor where dozens of small schooners were anchored.
“Passed Buch Island, also Double-Headed Shot,” Jean Rio wrote in her diary on March 12. “This is not exactly an island but a long chain of rocks.” The ship entered the Gulf of Mexico two days later, and from that point forward the climate was “immensely hot.” She counted seventeen sailboats of various sizes, elegant against the aquamarine bay. “I have often wondered and read of the beauty of Italian skies, but I am sure they cannot exceed in splendor that which, at this moment, arches over the Gulf of Florida, or Mexico, as it is mostly determined.”
The next day, the crew measured the fresh water on board the ship and calculated that there remained a twenty-three-day supply. Despite the delays on the open sea, the company was well supplied, and there was ample water for the final jaunt across the gulf to New Orleans. Jean Rio was taken with the scenery and the fact that they had almost arrived, and she refused to succumb to the pessimism and apprehension infecting many on board. “At seven in the evening a violent squall came on,” she wrote, “driving most of the passengers below. Myself, with a few others, remained on deck, bidding defiance to the rain for the sake of enjoying the night of lightning which was very beautiful, seeming to illuminate one half of the horizon at once.” Even though the night was as rough as “when skirting the Bay of Biscay,” she stayed up to watch the light show. When the rest of her family fell prey to seasickness, she remained absorbed in the momentous occasion. “To my astonishment,” she wrote upon awakening the following morning, “the sun was rising on our starboard now,” and the water was “a perfect mirror.”
At noon on March 18, a steamship came out to meet the boat and pull it in to anchor at the island of Belize. “A boat has come alongside us loaded with oysters, which have found a ready market,” she wrote. The houses in the village were reflected perfectly in the water. “There is a small schooner lying at anchor just by the landing place, and every rope and block in her rigging is seen reversed exactly as if standing on an immense looking glass.”
The next morning a steamer took the
George W. Bourne
in tow, pulling the battered but intact vessel 110 miles up the Mississippi River to New Orleans. “America at last!” Jean Rio wrote upon arrival in the city two days later.
To describe the scenery on each side of this mighty stream needs a better pen than mine. No description that I have ever read has done it anything like justice. Sugar and cotton plantations abound. The houses of the planters are built in
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