Lasar's spacious marquee was quickly put up, and the long pennants hoisted over it: in front of this tent a large fire was lit, and buffalo hides spread round it, on which the ladies reclined. We attended to the horses, carried our baggage to other fires at which we intended to spend the night, and then gradually collected in front of Lasar's tent, where the coffee was already boiling and various kettles for supper were standing in the ashes. The negroes too soon rode up with heavily-loaded cattle, and each of us put some of the meat on a spit in front of the fire, or laid a marrow-bone to roast. The night was magnificent, not a breath of air stirred the dark leaves of the primæval evergreen live oaks, which spread out their long horizontal branches over our heads. Between them the moon, in its first quarter, spread its silvery light over us, and the sky was covered with twinkling stars. In the dark distance we could hear the notes of nocturnal birds of passage, which proved to us, by their northward flight, that the winter there could no longer be very severe; till these notes were lost in the rustling of the adjacent stream, which filled up every pause in our animated conversation. We sat for a long time round the brightly-burning fire, till the ladies retired inside the tent, and we proceeded to our several fires and wrapped ourselves in our buffalo robes. Trusty alone still sat with his nose in the air when my eyes closed, and it was his voice woke me, when one of Lasar's negroes rose. I also leaped up, led Czar--though he felt no particular inclination to rise--into the grass; took my rifle, and went to the river, where I could hear the gobbling of the turkeys. It was still too dark to shoot with certainty, when I got under the lofty pecan-nut trees which stood on its banks. On their highest branches the birds were sitting and saluting the dawn. I listened to them for a long time ere I raised my rifle, and sent a bullet through one of them. It fell from branch to branch, and startled the others, which flew off noisily, while the hundreds standing on the trees around, timidly thrust out their long necks, but would not leave their night quarters.