er and booty, they would
constantly pour upon them their worthless population. They, therefore,
destroyed their farms and their bridges; and collecting their horses and
cattle, they retreated upon the Red River among their own people. The
Cherokee campaign is a topic of much boasting among the Texans, as they
say they expelled the Indians from their country; but a fact, which they
are not anxious to publish, is, that for every Cherokee killed, twenty
Texans bit the dust.

Since that period the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks have had several
war councils, and I doubt not that they are only waiting for an
opportunity to retaliate, and will eventually sweep off the entire
eastern population of Texas.

The fact is, that a democratic form of government is powerless when the
nation is so utterly depraved. Austin, the father of Texan colonization,
quitted the country in disgust. Houston, whose military talents and
well-known courage obtained for him the presidency, has declared his
intention to do the same, and to retire to the United States, to follow
up his original profession of a lawyer. Such is the demoralized state of
Texas at the present moment; what it may hereafter be is in the womb
of Time.

CHAPTER XXXII.

We had now entered the white settlements of the Sabine river, and found,
to our astonishment, that, far from arriving at civilization, we were
receding from it; the farms of the Wakoes and well-cultivated fields of
the Pawnee-Picts, their numerous cattle and comfortable dwellings, were
a strong contrast to the miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins
we passed by. Every farmer we met was a perfect picture of wretchedness
and misery; their women dirty and covered with rags, which could
scarcely conceal their nudity; the cattle lean and starving; and the
horses so weak that they could scarcely stand upon their legs.

Where was the boasted superiority of the Texans over the Indian race? or
were these individuals around us of that class of beings who, not daring
to reside within the jurisdiction of the law, were obliged to lead a
borderer's life, exposed to all the horrors of Indian warfare and
famine? Upon inquiry, we discovered that these frontier men were all,
more or less, eminent members of the Texan Republic, one being a
general, another a colonel; some speakers of the House of
Representatives; and many of them members of Congress, judges, and
magistrates. Notwithstanding their high officia