culiar to the Shoshone
territory, and Upper California), a kind of mixture of the fox and wolf
breed, fierce little animals with bushy tails and large heads, and a
quick, sharp bark.

The amphibious are the beaver, the fresh-water and sea otter; the
musk-rat, and a species of long lizard, with sharp teeth, very like the
cayman as regards the head and tail, but with a very short body. It is
a very fierce animal, killing whatever it attacks, dwelling in damp,
shady places, in the juncks, upon the borders of some lakes, and is much
dreaded by the Indians; fortunately, it is very scarce. The Shoshones
have no particular name for it, but would sooner attack a grizzly bear
than this animal, which they have a great dread of, sometimes calling it
the evil spirit, sometimes the scourge, and many other such
appellations. It has never yet been described by any naturalist, and I
never yet saw one dead, although I have heard of their having been
killed.

In Texas, the country presents two different aspects, much at variance
with each other, the eastern borders and sea-coast being only a
continuation of the cypress swamps, mud creeks, and cane-brakes of south
Arkansas, and west Louisiana; while, on the contrary, the north and west
offer much the same topography as that of the countries I have just
delineated. The climate in Texas is very healthy two hundred miles from
the sea, and one hundred west of the Sabine, which forms the eastern
boundary of Texas; but to the east and south the same diseases and
epidemics prevail as in Louisiana, Alabama, and the Floridas.

The whole of Texas is evidently of recent formation, all the saline
prairies east of the Rio Grande being even now covered with shells of
all the species common to the Gulf of Mexico, mixed up with skeletons of
sharks, and now and then with petrified turtle, dolphin, rock fish, and
bonitas. A few feet below the surface, and hundreds of miles distant
from the sea, the sea-sand is found; and although the ground seems to
rise gradually as it recedes from the shores, the southern plains are
but a very little elevated above the surface of the sea until you arrive
at thirty degrees north, when the prairies begin to assume an undulating
form, and continually ascend till, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains,
they acquire a height of four and five thousand feet above the level of
the sea.

Texas does not possess any range of mountains with the exception that,
one hundred mil