, or keep on the Arkansas, and strike near Fort
Smith, in twenty or thirty days. We left Houston in the morning, passed
Montgomery, and kept on W. by N. between the Rio Brasos and Trinity
River, the first five days, then stood off north for the head of the
Sabine.

Game was very sparse, and rather shy, but falling in with some wild
turkeys, and a bee tree, we laid by two days and lived like fighting
cocks. The turkeys were picked off the tall trees, as they roosted after
night, by rifle shots, and no game I ever fed on can exceed the rich
flavor of a well-roasted, fat wild turkey. The bee tree was a
crowder--a large, hollow cyprus, about sixty feet high, straight as a
barber pole, and nearly seven feet in diameter at the base, and full
three feet through at the first branch, forty feet up. This must have
been the hive of many and many a swarm, for years past; the tree was cut
down, and contained from one to three hundred gallons of honey and comb!
Nor are such bee trees scarce about the head of the Sabine, Red River,
&c. Bears are very fond of honey. The weather then being much improved,
it was suggested that the camp should be moved a few miles off, and
leave the bee tree and its great surplus contents, to the bears; and if
they did come about, we should come back and have a few pops at them.
The plan was feasible, and all agreed; so, removing a few gallons of the
translucent delicacy, the camp was struck, and, following an old trail a
few miles, we found a delightful site for recamping under some large
oaks on a creek, a tributary of the Sabine river.

Some of the "boys," as each styled the others, during the day had found
"a deer lick," about three miles above the camp, and to vary the
_viands_ a little, it was proposed that three of the boys should go up
after dark, lay about, and see if a shot could be had at some of the
visitors of "the lick."

One of the old heads, and by-the-way we called him "old traps," from the
fact of his always being so ready to explain the manner and uses of all
sorts of traps, and the inexhaustible adventures he had with them in the
course of twenty years' experience in the far west.

Well, "old traps," Dr. C., and myself, were the deputed committee, that
night, to attend to the cases of the deer. Soon after dark we put out,
and in the course of a couple of hours, after some floundering in a
muddy "bottom" and through hazel brush, or chaparral, the "lick" was
found, and positions take