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 Texan 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.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

We had now entered a tract of land similar to that which we had
travelled over when on our route from the Wakoes to the Comanches. The
prairie was often intersected by chasms, the bottoms of which were
perfectly dry, so that we could procure water but once every twenty-four
hours, and that, too often so hot and so muddy, that even our poor
horses would not drink it freely. They had, however, the advantage over
us in point of feeding, for the grass was sweet and tender, and
moistened during night by the heavy dews; as for ourselves, we were
beginning to starve in earnest.

We had anticipated regaling ourselves with the juicy humps of the
buffaloes which we should kill, but although we had entered the very
heart of their gr