"We've many things to say within the bounds
Of this good chapter, which is 'mong the last;
So be of better cheer; for we are well
Nigh done."
We will just step over to Texas this morning, dear reader, for well we know the mocking-birds are singing sweetly, and the wild geese rise from the placid bayous, and flap their broad, white wings over the bright green prairies, on their inland flight, and the gentle breezes stir the dark, luxuriant foliage of the wide, primeval forests, while all the air is redolent with the odors of the ocean of flowers that cover the whole sunny land with bloom and beauty.
It is something more than a year since we parted with Esq. Camford in his new emigrant home, and now we have another party of friends arriving in our young "Italy of America," even the romantic Miss Mary Lester, and her John Falstaff husband; and Fred. Milder, too, has had time to wear off the edge of his love disappointment on the ridgy hog-wallows of this fair south-western land. For we don't believe there's another so effectual antidote in the world for a fit of the blues or love dumps, as a long day's ride in a Texan stage-coach, with three pair of wild mustangs for horses, over these same hog-wallows; to say nothing of the way they despatch jaundice, dyspepsia, and all the host of bilious diseases. But don't you quite understand what hog-wallows are, reader? Well, Heaven help you then, when you go out south or west, and pitch into them for the first time! Invoke your patron saint to keep your soul and body together, and prevent your limbs from flying off at tangents.
We will tell you how we once heard a Kentuckian (and God bless the Kentucky boys in general, for they are a whole-souled race!) account for these anomalous things. We were pitching through a group of them, some dozen of us in a miserable wagon, when one "new comer" asked his neighbor, "What is the cause of these confounded humps in the roads?"
"They are hog-wallows," responded the one interrogated, in a pompous tone, as if proud to display his superior knowledge of the land into which both the speakers had but recently made their advent.
"Hog-wallows!" exclaimed the man, more in doubt than ever by his newly-acquired knowledge, "what makes so many of them then?"
"Why, you see when the great rains come on," commenced the "wise 'un," "the country gets all afloat, and when it begins to dry off a little, the wild hogs come by thousands, and roll and flop about in the mud, and that makes all these pitch-holes, which they call hog-wallows."