rom Louisville to St. Louis, through Indiana and
Illinois; any tavern-keeper preferring losing the price of a bed, or of
a meal, sooner than run the risk of returning good change for bad money.
The note was finally changed in St. Louis for a three-dollar, bank of
Springfield, which being yet current, at a discount of four cents to the
dollar, enabled the fortunate owner to take his last tumbler of
port-wine sangaree before his departure for Texas.

Of course, the lawyer had no remorse of conscience, in swearing that the
note had never been his, but the tavern-keeper and two witnesses swore
to his having given it, and the poor fellow was condemned to recash and
pay expenses. Having not a cent, he was allowed to go, for it so
happened that the gaol was not built for such vagabonds, but for the
government officers, who had their sleeping apartments in it. This
circumstance occasioned it to be remarked by a few commonly honest
people of Galveston, that if the gates of the gaol were closed at night,
the community would be much improved.

Three days afterwards, a poor captain, from a Boston vessel, was
summoned for the very identical bank-note, which he was obliged to pay,
though he had never set his foot into the Tremont Hotel.

There is, in Galveston a new-invented trade, called "the rag-trade,"
which is very profitable. I refer to the purchasing and selling of
false bank-notes, which are, as in the lawyer's case, palmed upon any
stranger suspected of having money. On such occasions, the magistrate
and the plaintiff share the booty. I may as well here add a fact which
is well known in France and the United States. Eight days after the
Marquis de Saligny's (French charge d'affaires) arrival in Houston, he
was summoned before a magistrate, and, upon the oaths of the parties,
found guilty of having passed seven hundred dollars in false notes to a
land speculator. He paid the money, but as he never had had in his
possession any money, except French gold and notes of the Banque de
France, he complained to his government; and this specimen of Texian
honesty was the principal cause why the banker (Lafitte) suddenly broke
the arrangement he had entered into with General Hamilton (charge
d'affaires from Texas to England and France) for a loan of seven
millions of dollars.

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Note 1. So sacred are the laws of hospitality among these indians, that
a d