TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 
15 
deeds. Our companion, poor fellow, was happily ignorant 
of that sad event, and spoke of the expedition only as one 
of great hardship, yet such as he would have gladly shared. 
His brave kinsman was then dead ! 
When Mr. Simpson paused in these interesting narrations, 
our professor of psalmody, who had been beating the table 
with a tuning-fork, opened a solo upon Texas. He had been 
in that country, and was, in his own estimation, as familiar 
with its rivers, plains, forests and destiny, as with the paths 
across his father’s sheep pasture. Galveston was a London 
in embryo : Sam Houston had inherited the knee-buckles 
and shoe-knots of Washington’s patriotism: the whole 
country was an Eden in which he had obtained the best site 
for a grist-mill and the finest pond for eels! In short, we were 
informed in a tone of self-consequence, at least an octave 
above mi, on any known scale of conceit, that himself and a 
brace of fellow blades, on hearing that the government had 
offered a bounty of land to emigrants, went thither, remained 
long enough to perfect their title to a share of the public do¬ 
main, and were then obliged by pressing business to return 
to the States and leave others to fight and die for freedom. 
He had a belief that the Californias would make a respec¬ 
table abode for man, if it were conquered by a bold arm, a 
little music, and made into a Republic by a man, he did not 
mention his own name, whose character for bravery, intelli¬ 
gence and taste for the fine arts, he did not say psalmody, 
would draw around him the unemployed intellect and cou¬ 
rage of the States. In conclusion he modestly remarked, that 
he himself was destined to the Californias, but did not say 
that he intended to open there a revolutionary singing-school. 
While this conversation was going on, the good old ship 
was struggling with the tempest. She headed north¬ 
westerly, and as the storm and swells came from the south¬ 
west, she at one time lay in the trough of the sea, and then, 
as the wave bore down upon her, swayed t'ft the leeward a 
moment, rocked upon its summit, and as the surge passed 
