We resolved to avail ourselves of this information, anticipating that every Mormon dwelling would be as clean and comfortable as the one we were in; but we afterwards found out our mistake, for, during the fifteen days’ journey which we travelled between the Sabine and a place called Boston, we stopped at six different Mormon farms, either for night or fore-noon meals, but, unlike the first, they were anything but comfortable or prosperous. One circumstance, however, attracted particularly our attention; it was, that, rich or poor, the Mormon planters had superior cattle and horses, and that they had invariably stored up in their granaries or barns the last year’s crop of every thing that would keep. Afterwards I learned that these farmers were only stipendiary agents of the elders of the Mormons, who, in the case of a westward invasion being decided upon by Joe Smith and his people, would immediately furnish their army with fresh horses and all the provisions necessary for a campaign.
One morning we met with a Texian 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 Texian 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 Texian 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 Dubugue.
“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 returned to my host.
“Law!” he answered; “why, the trees are blazed on each side of the road.”
Now, if he had told me that at first, I could not have mistaken, for I had seen the blazing of a bridle-path; but as he had announced a military road, I expected, what it imported, a military road. I resumed my journey and entered the prairie. The rays of the sun were very powerful, and, wishing to water my horse, I hailed with delight a miserable hut, sixteen feet square, which I saw at about half a mile from the trail. In a few minutes I was before the door, and tied my horse to a post, upon which was a square board bearing some kind of hieroglyphics on both sides. Upon a closer inspection, I saw upon one side, “Ice,” and upon the other, “POSTOFF.”
“A Russian, a Swede, or a Norwegian,” thought I, knowing that Iowa contained eight or ten thousand emigrants of these countries. “Ice—well, that is a luxury rarely to be found by a traveller in the prairie, but it must be pretty dear; no matter, have some I must.”