A few years since I visited Niagara Falls.  Before leaving Buffalo a friend admonished me to avoid looking upon the descending floods until I should reach Table Rock, as this precaution would give me a more satisfactory impression.  These instructions were more easily given than observed.  I found it required no small share of nerve to pass down the near bank of the river with the eternal roar of its waters pouring into my ears, cross over Suspension Bridge, spanning the rushing tides below still tossing and foaming as though an ocean had broken from its prison, and then pass up the other bank, in full view of the cataract, and not look upon it until my feet were planted on Table Rock.  But from that hour to the present, I have never regretted the effort, for therein I learned the importance of position, when face to face with any great question.  The position gained, I raised my eyes upon Niagara Falls.  I need not say my whole being was thrilled.  There lay the great “horse shoe” full before me, and I seemed to stand upon its outer crest and look down into its deep chasm, where the angry waters wrestled with each other in their wildest frenzy.  Then the floods from either side, that had seemed to sweep around the chasm and hug the shore, as if in mortal terror, despairing of escape, rushed upon each other like two storm fiends.  The war of waters was most terrific.  The very earth shook.  Locked in deadly embrace, and writhing as if in direst agony, the mighty floods plunged the abyss, while far above floated the white plume of the presiding genius of old Niagara.  The impression upon me was overwhelming.  I saw Niagara Falls from the right stand-point.  Whether I was equally fortunate in my early views of the Itinerancy is a question that will find solution in the following pages.

I decided, however, to go West.  My father and the balance of his family had been looking enquiringly in that direction for several months, and I now agreed to accompany them.

It was our purpose to make Dubuque, Iowa, the point of destination, as the founders of that city, who were relatives, had visited us in the East and had given us glowing accounts of the city and the adjacent portions of the State.  With this purpose in view we landed at Racine.  The Madison, a crazy old steamer that could lay on more sides during a storm than any water craft that I had ever seen, landed us on a pier in the night, and from the pier we were taken ashore in a scow.  We reached Racine in June, 1844.  Racine at that time was a very small village, but, like all western towns, it was in the daily belief that, at some time in the near future, it would be a very large city.  We spent the Sabbath and enjoyed the pleasure of attending religious services in a school house.  The pastor of our church at the time was Rev. Milton Bourne, of the Rock River Conference.  We were favorably impressed with Racine, and especially with the evidences of civilization it afforded, in the fact of a school house and the establishment of religious services.