te seemed adverse to our progress. No sooner had we escaped from
the sand than we fell into the mud, which was still worse.

We toiled on till 11.30 A.M., at which hour we reached "_King's
Ranch_," which for several days I had heard spoken of as a sort of
Elysium, marking as it does the termination of the sands, and the
commencement of comparative civilisation.

We halted in front of the house, and after cooking and eating, I walked
up to the "ranch," which is a comfortable, well-furnished wooden
building.

Mr and Mrs King had gone to Brownsville; but we were received by Mrs
Bee, the wife of the Brownsville general, who had heard I was on the
road.

She is a nice lively little woman, a red-hot Southerner, glorying in the
facts that she has no Northern relations or friends, and that she is a
member of the Church of England.

Mr King first came to Texas as a steamboat captain, but now owns an
immense tract of country, with 16,000 head of cattle, situated, however,
in a wild and almost uninhabited district. King's Ranch is distant from
Brownsville only 125 miles, and we have been six days in reaching it.

After drying our clothes and our food after the rain of last night, we
started again at 2.30 P.M.

We now entered a boundless and most fertile prairie, upon which, as far
as the eye could reach, cattle were feeding.

Bulls and cows, horses and mares, came to stare at us as we passed.
They all seemed sleek and in good condition, yet they get nothing but
what they can pick up on the prairie.

I saw a man on horseback kill a rabbit with his revolver. I also saw a
scorpion for the first time.

We halted at 5.30 P.M., and had to make our fire principally of
cow-dung, as wood is very scarce on this prairie.

We gave up the Judge's horse at King's Ranch. The lawgiver now rides on
the box with Mr Sargent.

* * * * *

_20th April_ (Monday).--I slept well last night in spite of the numerous
prairie-wolves which surrounded us, making a most dismal noise.

The Jew was ill again, but both Mr Sargent and the Judge were very kind
to him; so also was M'Carthy, who declared that a person incapable of
protecting himself, and sickly, such as this little Jew, is always sure
of kind treatment and compassion, even from the wildest Texans.

We started at 5 A.M., and had to get through some dreadful mud--Mr
Sargent in an awful bad humour, and using terrific language.

We were much delayed by thi