The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

FROM THE SANDUSKY CLARION.

INTERESTING INCIDENT

The following incident occurred upon a desolate Island of Lake Erie, about the 2d of September last. Major Keeler, of Port Lawrence, on the Maumee River, with his interesting little daughter Grace, aged about 16 years, took passage from Sandusky Bay, in the schooner Eclipse, which was bound to Detroit. The Major requested the Captain to set him and his daughter ashore on the Middle Bass, one of the cluster of the Put-in-Bay Islands, for the purpose of taking a small boat to go to Port Lawrence. The Major engaged a Mr. Martin and his son to take himself and daughter to his place of residence. They embarked from the Island in a small boat, with good weather. Having proceeded on their way about twenty miles they were overtaken by the late tremendous storm, which jeopardized so many human lives, and vessels of every description, on the Lakes.

They fortunately made the Western Sister Island: but so irresistible was the raging storm, that the Island, which contains about a hundred acres, although it afforded them dry land and a momentary security, for themselves, from the violence of the storm, yet it afforded none to the frail bark, and she was soon dashed in pieces on the rocks, in spite of all their efforts to prevent it. They were then without any possible means of transporting themselves to any inhabited land. Totally destitute of any kind of provisions, and without any possible means of procuring any, no more gloomy prospect could be presented to the human mind. When and how they should get relief was altogether left to accident or the intervention of Providence.

After subsisting several days on snakes and snails, which was the only food they could procure on the Island, they undertook and dug out with their old axe, the trunk of a basswood tree, which was barely large enough to carry Mr. Martin and his boy. In this, they two committed themselves to the mercy of the winds and waves, and steered their course to the Island whence they came. In this very uncertain and clumsy vessel, they had to venture about twenty miles in the open lake. With the greatest difficulty and utmost struggle, Mr. Martin and his son reached the Island, and procured a boat, and went immediately to the relief of Major Keeler and his daughter, and, to the great satisfaction of the boat's crew, found them still alive, though greatly emaciated with hunger, having subsisted six days entirely on snakes and snails.