Mounted upon this ticklish steed and in company with my friend, I made various excursions to Bolivar, Marion, Columbia, Anahuac, incipient cities consisting of from five to twenty houses.  We also visited numerous plantations and clearings, to the owners of some of which we were known, or had messages of introduction; but either with or without such recommendations, we always found a hearty welcome and hospitable reception, and it was rare that we were allowed to pay for our entertainment.

We arrived one day at a clearing which lay a few miles off the way from Harrisburg to San Felipe de Austin, and belonged to a Mr Neal.  He had been three years in the country, occupying himself with the breeding of cattle, which is unquestionably the most agreeable, as well as profitable, occupation that can be followed in Texas.  He had between seven and eight hundred head of cattle, and from fifty to sixty horses, all mustangs.  His plantation, like nearly all the plantations in Texas at that time, was as yet in a very rough state, and his house, although roomy and comfortable enough inside, was built of unhewn tree-trunks, in true back-woodsman style.  It was situated on the border of one of the islands, or groups of trees, and stood between two gigantic sycamores, which sheltered it from the sun and wind.  In front, and as far as could be seen, lay the prairie, covered with its waving grass and many-coloured flowers, behind the dwelling arose the cluster of forest trees in all their primeval majesty, laced and bound together by an infinity of wild vines, which shot their tendrils and clinging branches hundreds of feet upwards to the very top of the trees, embracing and covering the whole island with a green network, and converting it into an immense bower of vine leaves, which would have been no unsuitable abode for Bacchus and his train.

These islands are one of the most enchanting features of Texian scenery.  Of infinite variety and beauty of form, and unrivalled in the growth and magnitude of the trees that compose them, they are to be found of all shapes—­circular, parallelograms, hexagons, octagons—­some again twisting and winding like dark-green snakes over the brighter surface of the prairie.  In no park or artificially laid out grounds, would it be possible to find any thing equalling these natural shrubberies in beauty and symmetry.  In the morning and evening especially, when surrounded by a sort of veil of light-greyish mist, and with the horizontal beams of the rising or setting sun gleaming through them, they offer pictures which it is impossible to get weary of admiring.

Mr Neal was a jovial Kentuckian, and he received us with the greatest hospitality, only asking in return all the news we could give him from the States.  It is difficult to imagine, without having witnessed it, the feverish eagerness and curiosity with which all intelligence from their native country is sought after and listened to by these dwellers in the desert.  Men, women, and children, crowded round us; and though we had arrived in the afternoon, it was near sunrise before we could escape from the enquiries by which we were overwhelmed, and retire to the beds that had been prepared for us.