Monsieur Le Clère (Le Clare), a Frenchman who visited Texas about this time, writes thus of Houston: “I cannot say that Houston is a great city, although it is a capital. The principal street, Main Street, which is laid out in a straight line, and handsome enough for the country, runs down to the river. The footwalks are barely marked out. We found the landing still blocked by enormous trunks of trees. Great southern pines are left standing in the street. The ascent which leads from the bayou to the city is very rough, and one stumbles over the logs that encumber it. By the side of houses of tolerably fine appearance (though built entirely of wood), one meets here and there with those poor houses called log cabins. Finally, as a last touch to this picture, there stand in Main Street and near the capitol two great tents which would do honor to a chief of the Tartars or Bedouins. “The environs of Houston are not inhabited. A great number of the people I saw in the city were going further west, but their passage gave it a very lively appearance. They were on horseback, and almost all armed with the terrible weapon called the bowie knife. Most of them carried before them on the saddle that rifle, excessively long, which they handle with a wonderful skill, and which Jackson’s men used so well at the battle of New Orleans.” The capitol building was unfinished, and Congress was obliged to shorten its sittings when it rained or a “norther” blew fiercely through the shutterless windows. The President’s house was a double log cabin with a puncheon floor. But the naturalist Audubon describes President Houston (May, 1837) as receiving his guests in this rude cabin, “dressed in a fancy velvet coat and trousers trimmed with gold lace; and around his neck was tied a cravat somewhat in the style of 1776.” The same writer speaks of the members of the cabinet as men bearing the stamp of “intellectual ability, simple, though bold in their general appearance.” All sorts of people from at home and abroad thronged the little capital. Curious travelers like Audubon and Le Clère, the Frenchman, brushed against hunters clad in buck-skin, traders with pack-mules, and eager-eyed young adventurers from “the States.” [Illustration: A Comanche Chief.]