"On the third day after we left Richmond, in the bitterness of my
heart, I was induced to say, 'I am past all hope;' but it pleased the
Father of mercy to look upon me, and He sent a strengthening thought
into my heart--that He that made the heavens and the earth was able
to deliver me. I looked up to the sky, and then on the trees and the
ground, and I believed, in a moment, that if He could make all these,
He was able to deliver me.
"Then did that Scripture come into my mind, 'They that trust in the
Lord shall never be confounded.' I believed it, and got out of the
wagon unperceived, and went into the bushes. There were three wagons
in company: when they missed me, they looked round some time for me,
but not finding me, they went on; and that night I travelled through
thunder, lightning, and rain, a considerable distance."
His trials and difficulties in getting along were many and various;
but at Petersburg he met a man from his neighborhood, circumstanced
like himself: they got a small boat, went down James River, and landed
on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, and travelled to Hunting
Creek, where their wives were. "But," says he, "we found little or no
satisfaction, for we were hunted like partridges on the mountains."
His poor companion, being threatened again with slavery, in attempting
to escape, was pursued and killed; on which Solomon makes the following
remarks: "Now, reader, you have heard of the end of my fellow-sufferer,
but I remain as yet a monument of mercy, thrown up and down on life's
tempestuous sea; sometimes feeling an earnest desire to go away and be
at rest; but I travail on, in hopes of overcoming at my last combat.
"It being thought best for me to leave Virginia, I went to Dover,
in Delaware, the distance of about one hundred and twenty miles." By
travelling in the night, and laying by in the day-time, he at length
reached that place, but not without great difficulty, from being hunted
and pursued.
In concluding this part of his narrative, he says, "Oh, what pains God
takes to help His otherwise helpless creatures! Oh, that His kindness
and care were more considered and laid to heart! and then there would
not be that cause to complain that 'the ox knoweth his owner, and the
ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not
consider;' but they would see that they are of more value than many
sparrows; and that they are not their own, but bought with a price.
Now, unto the King immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be glory and
honor, dominion and power, now and forever. Amen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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