50 Audubon's Western Journal 



Three such nights and four days of hot sun, and 

 we were running over the bar at Brazos in only 

 seven or eight feet of water. Not a landmark more 

 than ten feet high was in sight, but we could see 

 miles and miles of breakers combing and dashing 

 on the glaring beach, broken here and there by 

 dark, weather-stained wrecks of unfortunate ves- 

 sels that had found their doom on this desolate 

 shore. 



Brazos, like Houston in 1837, is nothing if you 

 take away what belongs to government, a long flat 

 a mile wide, extending for a good distance towards 

 the Rio Grande, is kept out of reach of the sea by a 

 range of low sand hills, if drifts of eight to ten 

 or fifteen feet deserve the name; so like those on 

 all our low shores from Long Island to Florida 

 that every traveller knows what the island of 

 Brazos is. The inner bay, however, looking 

 towards Point Isabel is beautiful, and but for the 

 extreme heat would have given me a splendid 

 opportunity for one of my greatest pleasures, 

 sailing. 



We found a few cases of cholera had occurred 

 here, and Major Chapman^ with the kindness so 

 generally shown by our officers to their country- 

 men, sent ofif our party at once in the government 

 steamer "Mentoria." At New Orleans I could 



^ William Warren Chapman was brevetted major for gal- 

 lant conduct in the battle of Buena Vista, and died in 1859. 



