After partaking of a cold snack, it not yet being the dinner-hour, mounted on a horse which the doctor loaned me, I obtained the necessary directions, and turning my back on the Mississippi river, struck into the interior, in search of the contemplated location. The settlement to which I was destined, was situated on a small river which, singular to relate, as I had never heard of any member of my family having ever lived there, bore the same name as myself, being called the “Tensas.” Looking upon this coincidence of names as a good omen, an assurance at least that I would meet one acquaintance or kinsman there, I surrendered my mind to a renewal of my day-dreams of future professional success and distinction, and disregarding a proper notice of the road, suddenly awakened and found myself lost--the road having given out in a cypress brake. To resolve to return was one thing, to do it another, for the timber roads so crossed and interlaced each other that I frequently found myself returning to the same point in the “brake” from whence I started. Well, thought I, I hope my future lot will be a verification of the old adage, that a “bad beginning makes a good ending,” for mine is bad enough. I wandered about several hours, occasionally dismounting to assist my horse out of some slough wherein he had bogged, and was about to give it up as a bad job, when I had the good fortune to find a road, which, being over knee-deep in mud, and dotted with the bones of deceased oxen, I judged to be the main highway, which conjecture I soon verified on meeting a traveller. After proceeding a few miles I reached Eagle Lake, which it was necessary to cross in a shallow ferry flat. Here an accident occurred, which came near preventing these pages from ever being written. The current was running very strongly from a small bayou into the lake, and as we approached the shore, suddenly striking the flat, it impelled it with considerable force against a tree, which the high water had submerged for ten or twelve feet. I was standing in the bow of the flat, holding my horse by the rein, and the shock nearly prostrated us both. Before I could recover, the horse plunged overboard. I would have been dragged with him to almost certain death, as I could not swim, had not the ferry-man caught me, and released my arm from the rein. The steed swam to shore; and after a short time suffered himself to be mounted. Matters, so far, I must confess, had not impressed me very favourably with the country--first to be lost in a cypress brake, and then my life placed in jeopardy, looked rather like discouraging treatment; but I had determined to bear up against everything, and if these were the heaviest misfortunes I had to encounter, to laugh at care.