et with a Texan constable going to arrest a murderer. He
asked us what o'clock it was, as he had not a _watch_, and told us that
a few minutes' ride would bring us to Boston, a new Texan city. We
searched in vain for any vestiges which could announce our being in the
vicinity of even a village; at last, however, emerging from a swamp,
through which we had been forcing our way for more than an hour, we
descried between the trees a long building, made of the rough logs of
the black pine, and as we advanced, we perceived that the space between
the logs (about six inches) had not been filled up, probably to obtain a
more free circulation of air. This building, a naked negro informed us,
was Ambassadors' Hall, the great and only hotel of Texan Boston.

Two hundred yards farther we perceived a multitude of individuals
swarming around another erection of the same description, but without a
roof, and I spurred on my horse, believing we should be in time to
witness some cockfighting or a boxing-match; but my American
fellow-travellers, better acquainted with the manners and customs of the
natives, declared it was the "Court-House." As we had nothing to do
there, we turned our horses' heads towards the tavern, and the barking
of a pack of hungry dogs soon called around us a host of the Bostonians.

It is strange that the name of city should be given to an unfinished
log-house, but such is the case in Texas; every individual possessing
three hundred acres of land calls his lot a city, and his house becomes
at once the tavern, the post-office, the court-house, the gaol, the
bank, the land-office, and, in fact, everything. I knew a man near the
Red River, who had obtained from government an appointment of
postmaster, and during the five years of his holding the office, he had
not had a single letter in his hand.

This city mania is a very extraordinary disease in the United States,
and is the cause of much disappointment to the traveller. In the Iowa
territory, I once asked a farmer my way to Dubuque.

"A stranger, I reckon," he answered; "but no matter, the way is plain
enough. Now, mind what I say. After you have forded the river, you will
strike the military road till you arrive in the prairie; then you ride
twenty miles east, till you arrive at Caledonia city; there they will
tell you all about it."

I crossed the river, and, after half an hour's fruitless endeavours, I
could not find the military road, so I forded back, and