ing up with the
expedition than by following their steps to Austin.

"Had you come a few hours earlier to-day," said he, "you could have
joined company with a Friar who is travelling to Bexar; but you 'll
easily overtake him, as he travels with a little wagon and a sick woman.
They are making a pilgrimage to the saints there for her health. They
have two lazy mules and a half-breed driver that won't work miracles on
the roads, whatever the Virgin may after! You'll soon come up with them,
if Charry's like what she used to be."

This intelligence was far from displeasing to me. I longed for some
companionship; and that of a Friar, if not very promising as to
amusement, had at least the merit of safety,--no small charm in such a
land as I then sojourned in. I learned besides that he was an Irishman
who had come out as a missionary among the Choctaws, and that he was
well versed in prairie life; that he spoke many of the Indian dialects,
and knew the various trails of these pathless wilds like any trapper of
them all.

Such a fellow-traveller would be indeed a prize; and as I saddled my
mare to follow him, I felt lighter at heart than I had done for a long
time previous. "And his name?" said I.

"It is half-Mexican by this. They call him Fra Miguel up at Bexar."

"Now then for Fra Miguel!" cried I, springing into my saddle; and with a
frank "Good-bye," took the road to Bexar.

I rode along with a light heart, my way leading through a forest of
tall beech and alder trees, whose stems were encircled by the twining
tendrils of the "Liana," which oftentimes spanned the space overhead,
and tempered the noonday sun by its delicious shade. Birds of gay
plumage and strange note hopped from branch to branch, while hares and
rabbits sat boldly on the grassy road, and scarcely cared to move at my
approach The crimson-winged bustard, the swallow-tailed woodpecker,
with his snowy breast, and that most beautiful of all, the lazuli finch,
whose color would shame the blue waters of the Adriatic, chirped and
fluttered on every side. The wild squirrel, too, swung by his tail, and
jerked himself from bough to bough, in all the confidence of unmolested
liberty; while even the deer, timid without danger, stood and gazed at
me as I went, doubtless congratulating themselves that they were not
born to be beasts of burden.

There was so much novelty to me in all around that the monotonous
character of the scene never wearied; for, although