“The pestilent influence of the recent horrible murders on the Arkansas, and other United States’ rivers, has caused the practice of lynching to break forth with renewed fury in Texas, where it had apparently slept for the previous year.  And we find recorded in the Texas papers nearly a dozen of these murders that have occurred, and undoubtedly there have been more than as many more.  In Shelby county two citizens have been shot down, and several houses burned by a party of outlaws.  In Red River two men have been hanged as horse-thieves, without judge or jury.  In Washington county one man has been shot down, under the pretence that he was a murderer.  In Austin county two men were killed, and two hostile parties were in arms for several days, taking the law into their own hands.  In Jefferson county two men have been killed, and the house of one of them burnt to the ground by a party of self-styled ‘regulators.’  And all this in the space of a year.”

Several of my fellow-passengers were from Cuba, and some of them slave-holders by their own admission.  With one or two of those who could speak English, I had much conversation on the abolition of slavery.  They concurred with apparent sincerity in the desire that the slave trade might be effectually suppressed.  They seemed to consider that this trade was promoted by the mother country as one means of preventing the colony from aspiring to independence.  They admitted the abstract injustice of slavery, and one remarked, that a difference of the color of the skin was a misfortune, not a crime.  They were not, however, disposed to entertain a thought of emancipation, without being fully compensated for their slaves.

I had again the pleasure of observing on this voyage, the benefits of the change of system with regard to the supply of wines and spirits, each passenger paying for what he consumes, instead of his fare including the privilege of drinking ad libitum.  One of the stewards told me the quantity consumed was little more than one-tenth as much as under the former system.

I cannot conclude my narrative more gratefully to my own feelings than by a tribute to the upright and conscientious officer who commanded the vessel.  On the first day of the week, the only one we spent at sea, the passengers, and as many of the servants as could conveniently attend, assembled morning and evening in the saloon, for the purpose of religious worship.  Lord Frederick Fitzclarence, one of the passengers, officiating as a minister of the English Establishment; and every evening a similar opportunity was offered in the fore cabin to all who were inclined to be present.  The captain firmly resisted the introduction of cards on the first day of the week, and in his whole conduct manifested an anxiety not only for the temporal comfort and safety, but for the spiritual interests of those under his care.  Would that all captains of vessels, invested as they are with such authority and influence over the passengers and crews, were like-minded with my friend Captain McKellar.