Though protected from the immediate reach of the flames by the branch of the river upon the shore of which we were encamped, the heat had become so intense, that we were obliged to shift farther to the west. Except in the supply of arms and ammunition, we perceived that our booty was worth nothing. This Texan expedition must have been composed of a very beggarly set, for there was not a single yard of linen, nor a miserable worn-out pair of trousers, to be found in all their bundles and boxes.
Among the horses taken, some thirty or forty were immediately identified by the Comanches as their own property, many of them, during the preceding year, having been stolen by a party of Texans, who had invited the Indians to a grand council. Gabriel, Roche, and I, of course, would accept none of the booty; and as time was now becoming to me a question of great importance, we bade farewell to our Comanche friends, and pursued our journey east, in company with the five Americans.
During the action, the Comanches had had forty men wounded and only nine killed. Yet, two months afterwards, I read in one of the American newspapers a very singular account of the action. It was a report of General Smith, commandant of the central force of Texas, relative to the glorious expedition against the savages, in which the gallant soldiers of the infant republic had achieved the most wonderful exploits. It said, "That General Smith having been apprised, by the unfortunate Captain Hunt, that five thousand savages had destroyed the rising city of Lewisburg, and murdered all the inhabitants, had immediately hastened with his intrepid fellows to the neighbourhood of the scene; that there, during the night, and when every man was broken down with fatigue, they were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, who had with them some twenty half-breeds and French and English traders. In spite of their disadvantages, the Texans repulsed the Comanches with considerable loss, till the morning, when the men were literally tired with killing, and the prairie was covered with the corpses of two thousand savages; the Texans themselves having lost but thirty or forty men, and these people of little consequence, being emigrants recently arrived from the States. During the day, the stench became so intolerable, that General Smith caused the prairie to be set on fire, and crossing the river, returned home by slow marches, knowing it would be quite useless to pursue the Comanches in the wild and broken prairies of the north. Only one Texan of note had perished during the conflict--the brave and unfortunate Captain Hunt; so that, upon the whole, considering the number of the enemy, the republic may consider this expedition as the most glorious enterprise since the declaration of Texan independence."
The paragraph went on in this manner till it filled three close columns, and as a finale, the ex-butcher made an appeal to all the generous and "liberty-loving" sons of the United States and Texas, complaining bitterly against the cabinets of St. James and the Tuileries, who, jealous of the prosperity and glory of Texas, had evidently sent agents (trappers and half-breeds) to excite the savages, through malice, envy, and hatred of the untarnished name and honour of the great North American Republic.
The five Americans who accompanied us were of a superior class, three of them from Virginia, and two from Maryland, Their history was that of many others of their countrymen, Three of them had studied the law, one divinity, and the other medicine. Having no opening for the exercise of their profession at home, they had gone westward, to carve a fortune in the new States; but there everything was in such a state of anarchy that they could not earn their subsistence; they removed farther west, until they entered Texas, "a country sprung up but yesterday, and where an immense wealth can be made." They found, on their arrival at this anticipated paradise, their chances of success in their profession still worse than in their own country. The lawyers discovered that, on a moderate computation, there were not less than ten thousand attorneys in Texas, who had emigrated from the Eastern States; the president, the secretaries, constables, tavern-keepers, generals, privates, sailors, porters, and horse-thieves were all of them originally lawyers, or had been brought up to that profession.
As to the doctor, he soon found that the apologue of the "wolf and the stork" had been written purposely for medical practice in Texas, for as soon as he had cured a patient (picked the bone out of his throat), he had to consider himself very lucky if he could escape from half-a-dozen inches of the bowie-knife, by way of recompense; moreover, every visit cost him his pocket-handkerchief or his 'bacco-box, if he had any. I have to remark here, that kerchief-taking is a most common joke in Texas, and I wonder very much at it, as no individual of the male species, in that promised land, will ever apply that commodity to its right use, employing for that purpose the pair of snuffers which natural instinct has supplied him with. At the same time, it must be admitted that no professional man can expect employment, without he can flourish a pocket-handkerchief.
As for the divine, he soon found that religion was not a commodity required in so young a country, and that he might just as well have speculated in sending a cargo of skates to the West Indies, or supplying Mussulmans with swine. The merits of the voluntary system had not been yet appreciated in Texas; and if he did preach, he had to preach by himself, not being able to obtain a clerk to make the responses.
As we travelled along the dreary prairies, these five Eldorado seekers proved to be jovial fellows, and there was about them an elasticity of temper which did not allow them to despond. The divine had made up his mind to go to Rome, and convert the Pope, who, after all, was a clever old bon vivant; the doctor would go to Edinburgh, and get selected, from his superior skill, as president of the Surgical College; one of the lawyers determined he would "run for legislature," or keep a bar (a whisky one); the second wished to join the Mormons, who were a set of clever blackguards; and the third thought of going to China, to teach the celestial brother of the sun to use the Kentucky rifle and "brush the English." Some individuals in England have reproached me with indulging too much in building castles in the air; but certainly, compared to those of a Yankee in search after wealth, mine have been most sober speculations.
Each of our new companions had some little Texan history to relate, which they declared to be the most rascally, but smartish trick in the world. One of the lawyers was once summoned before a magistrate, and a false New Orleans fifty-dollar bank-note was presented to him, as the identical one he had given to the clerk of Tremont House (the great hotel at Galveston), in payment of his weekly bill. Now, the lawyer had often dreamed of fifties, hundreds, and even of thousands; but fortune had been so fickle with him, that he had never been in possession of bank-notes higher than five or ten dollars, except one of the glorious Cairo Bank twenty-dollar notes, which his father presented to him in Baltimore, when he advised him most paternally to try his luck in the West.
By the bye, that twenty-dollar Cairo note's adventures should be written in gold letters, for it enabled the traveller to eat, sleep, and drink, free of cost, from Louisville to St. Louis, through Indiana and Illinois; any tavern-keeper preferring losing the price of a bed, or of a meal, sooner than run the risk of returning good change for bad money. The note was finally changed in St. Louis for a three-dollar, bank of Springfield, which being yet current, at a discount of four cents to the dollar, enabled the fortunate owner to take his last tumbler of port-wine sangaree before his departure for Texas.