Arrival at Natchez--description of the city--starts for Texas with another traveller--cotton plantations--description of the cotton plant--passage through the great Mississippi swamp--cypress knees, water and mud--Tensaw river--overtaken by night in the swamp--gloomy situation--lake Lovelace--planter's house on Indian mound--mildness of the weather--good accommodations--travelling in a right spirit--anecdote of a testy traveller. 125 CHAPTER XV. Outlet of the lake--Washita river--Harrisonburg--pine woods--description of a planter--Red River rightly named--changes at its mouth--arrival at Alexandria and description of the place--race-course and horses--death of a gambler--fruit trees and vegetables--moschetoes. 134 CHAPTER XVI. Bayou Rapide--fine cotton plantations--stream running in opposite directions--accompanied by another traveller--pine woods--planter's house--price of meals, &c.--Spanish moss--bottom land covered with dense forest--pine woods--the widow's house--manner of lodging travellers--inquisitiveness of the people--emigrants to Texas--Sabine river. 139 CHAPTER XVII. Arrival in Texas--oak openings and prairies--plantations of corn and cotton--St. Augustine--arrival at Nacogdoches--its grotesque appearance--Indian trade in deer pelts--Galveston bay and Texas land company--four leagues of land for a dog--pine woods--Indian mounds--mounds in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois--Monastery near a mound--their origin and use--Neches river--new made bridge. 149 CHAPTER XVIII. Leave the pine woods--wet prairie--Trinity river--planter's house--death of an emigrant's wife--perplexities of emigration--an emigrant lost his money--breach of trust in a hired man--beautiful prairies--muddy streams--red cedar--petrified wood--mode of grinding corn--living from hand to mouth--beautiful prospect--Indians on horseback--massacre of twenty Polanders--muddy swamp--Brazos river--Spanish trader--Indians more friendly to Americans than Spaniards--prairie country--Cole's settlement--live oak--Colorado river. 160 CHAPTER XIX. GENERAL VIEW OF TEXAS--herds of buffalo and wild horses--mustangs, manner of catching--seacoast flat--Galveston bay and Texas land company--burning of the prairies--fine grazing country--wildgame--deer-hunting--shooting deer in the night--productions of the soil--list of forest trees--Spanish moss--health of the country and climate. 169 CHAPTER XX.