CHAP. XXIV.] EMIGRANTS TO THE WEST. G1 



my boots or trowsers, lest I should be thought to reflect on the 

 members of the family, who had no idea of indulging in such 

 refinements themselves. I could have dispensed cheerfully with 

 milk, butter, and other such luxuries ; but I felt much the want 

 of a private bed-room. Very soon, however, I came to regard it 

 as no small privilege to be allowed to have even a bed to myself. 

 On one occasion, when my host had humored my whims so far 

 in regard to privacy, I felt almost ashamed to see, in consequence, 

 a similar sized bed in the same room, occupied by my companion 

 and two others. When I related these inconveniences afterward 

 to an Episcopal clergyman, he told me that the bishop and some 

 of his clergy, when they travel through these woods in summer, 

 and the lawyers, when on the circuit, or canvassing for votes at 

 elections, have, in addition to these privations, to endure the 

 bites of countless musquitos, fleas, and bugs, so that I had great 

 reason to congratulate myself that it was now so cold. More 

 over, there are parties of emigrants in some of these woods, 

 where women delicately brought up, accustomed to be waited 

 on, and with infants at the breast, may now be seen on their 

 way to Texas, camping out, although the ground within their 

 tent is often soaked with heavy rain. &quot; If you were here in the 

 hot season,&quot; said another, &quot; the exuberant growth of the creepers 

 and briars would render many paths in the woods, through which 

 you now pass freely, impracticable, and venomous snakes would 

 make the forest dangerous.&quot; 



Calling on a proprietor to beg him to show me some fossil 

 bones, he finished by offering me his estate for sale at 3500 dol 

 lars. He said he had been settled there for twenty years with 

 his wife, longer than any one else in the whole country. He 

 had no children ; and when I expressed wonder that he could 

 leave, at his advanced age, a farm which he had reclaimed from 

 the wilderness, and improved so much, he answered, &quot; I hope to 

 feel more at home in Texas, for all my old neighbors have gone 

 there, and new people have taken their place here.&quot; 



The uncertainty of the cotton crops, and the sudden fluctua 

 tions in the value of cotton from year to year, have been the ruin 

 of many, and have turned almost every landowner into a mer 



