Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could spare she threw him ashore.

She and the lad followed by the aid of an overhanging willow bough.

The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him into a snow-bank.
But the perils of the river gave place to the perils of the woods.

In them Mary Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less a personage than the father of William Lloyd Garrison, until at length she found the hut of a friendly Indian, who took her in and "entertained her with his best words and deeds, and the next morning conducted her safely to her father's." The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of farmers, and Joseph Garrison was a man of unusual force and independence of character.

The life which these early settlers lived was a life lived partly on the land and partly on the river.