We also had the pleasure, if pleasure it may be called, of being lost a part of one night in the stage coach from Bloomington to Springfield, the capital of Illinois. The night becoming exceedingly dark, wet, and tempestuous, and the stage lamps emitting but a feeble ray, the driver, having no landmark in his eye, drove out into the wild grass, and, becoming bewildered, dismounted, seized the flickering lamp and wandered off in quest of a road, fearing some swamp or pit, dug for a railway, which he imagined to be near at hand, meantime leaving us to the mercies of his palpitating team. Unfortunately, he got out into an ocean of grass, in which he could find neither landmark nor heaven-mark to direct his team into the beaten track. Of course our anxiety for his safety and speedy return was as intense as his own. Though needing encouragement myself, I nevertheless endeavored to encourage our fellow-pilgrims, when immediately the winds, as if suddenly provoked, began to blow with fury, and the clouds to pour down their treasures of rain upon us. They beat upon our stage with such violence as to indicate the probability of either affrighting our team, left to their own discretion, or of inundating us through its too numerous chinks. Meanwhile, the safety of our driver became with us an object of thrilling importance, not altogether or exclusively for his safety, but necessarily for our own. Moments counted minutes, while, in the alternation of hope and fear, we imagined that we had lost him, or that he had lost the road. Our suspense in such a crisis of our affairs, may be more easily imagined than described. He, however, returned, but not with much more assurance of our deliverance than when he left. Still the question was undecided, whether there might not be some pit, or slough of despond, into which we might be drifted by the winds or by the precipitance of our team. This was a question which neither logic nor metaphysics, neither history nor chronology, could decide. We were, therefore, literally, sensibly, and every other way, completely in the dark. But when hope was almost gone, a feeble ray from the tempest-beaten lamp gave indications that our driver was plodding his way [555] back; but with what new light upon our destiny, we knew not. He gave but little satisfaction, for, indeed, he had none to give. Leaving the horses to their own discretion, we finally stumbled into the road, and, in eight hours and one-half, wading through mud, we completed fifteen miles, and safely arrived at Springfield.

[A. C.]      
Vol. 1853, page 63 [sic].      

Source:

Alexander Campbell. Extract from "Notes of Incidents in a Tour through Illinois and Missouri.--No. I." The Millennial Harbinger 24 (January 1853): 7-8.

[MHA2 555-556]