“Five dollars,” he answered.

I was quite thunderstruck, and, putting my money back in my pocket, I told him I would not pay him at all.  The man then began to swear I was a queer sort of a chap, and wondered how a gentleman could drink at a bar and not pay for his liquor.

“I always pay,” I answered, “what others pay; but I will not submit to such a swindling, and give five dollars for what Is only worth twenty-five cents.”

The host then came to me, with a smile.

“Why, Sir, we don’t charge more to you than to others.  Five dollars in ‘shin-plasters,’ or twenty-five cents in specie.”

All was thus explained, and the next morning.  I satisfied my bill of twenty-two dollars, with one dollar and twelve cents in silver.

This may appear strange to the English reader, who prefers bank-notes to gold; but he must reflect that England is not Arkansas, and that the Bank of England is not the “Real Estate Bank of Arkansas,” capital two millions of dollars.

Notwithstanding the grandeur of the last five words, I have been positively informed that the bank never possessed five dollars, and had not been able to pay the poor Cincinnati engraver who made the notes.  The merchants of Little Rock, who had set up the bank, were the usual purchasers of the produce from the farmer; but the credit of the bank was so bad, that they were obliged to offer three dollars in their notes for a bushel of wheat, which, in New York, commanded only eighty-four cents in specie.

The farmers, however, were as sharp as the merchants, and, compelled to deal with them, they hit upon a good plan.  The principal landholders of every county assembled, and agreed that they would also have a farmers’ bank, and a few months afterwards the country was inundated with notes of six-and-a-quarter, twelve-and-a-half, twenty-five, and fifty cents, with the following inscription:  “We, the freeholders and farmers of such county, promise to pay (so much) in Real Estate Bank of Arkansas notes, but not under the sum of five dollars.”

The bankers were caught in their own snares.  They were obliged to accept the “shin plasters” for the goods in their stores, with the pleasing perspective of being paid back with their own notes, which made their faces as doleful as the apothecary who was obliged to swallow his own pills.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

From Batesville to the southern Missouri border, the road continues for a hundred miles through a dreary solitude of rocky mountains and pine forests, full of snakes and a variety of game, but without the smallest vestige of civilization.  There is not a single blade of grass to be found, except in the hollows, and these are too swampy for a horse to venture upon.  Happily, small clear and limpid brooks are passed every half-hour, and I had had the precaution to provide myself, at a farm, with a large bag of maize for my horse.  After all, we fared better than we should have done at the log huts, and my faithful steed, at all events, escaped the “ring.”  What the “ring” is, I will explain to the reader.