The Perils and Adventures of Harry Skipwith by Land and Sea. Kingston William Henry Giles
contract, and had their reasons for not going to the town with such suspicious people as we were. Against this I had nothing to say. I thus had practical experience of the inconvenience of having been seen in bad company. Though a reason, it is the lowest for avoiding it. How to get my baggage into the town was a puzzle, till I bethought me of slinging it on a long pole, one end of which Peter carried on his shoulder, and the other I placed under my arm, and thus we began our march towards the town.
Chapter Five
The founders of Galveston must have been very fond of sand. It stands on sand, is surrounded by sand, and in high winds almost covered with sand. We could scarcely get along: We sank over our ankles at every step. I heard Peter groan frequently, and poor Ready dragged his weary legs after my heels with his tongue out, till I began to be afraid that he would go mad with the heat. As to fresh water, that seemed an impossibility, and there was nothing cooling in the appearance of the bright shining surface of the surrounding ocean. Still to stop would positively have been death, so on we trudged, I doing my best to keep up the spirits of my two-legged as well as four-legged companion. At last, in no very dignified guise, we entered among the streets of wooden houses, bordered by odoriferous and flowering trees, which compose Galveston. Two white people carrying a load was a sight rarely seen, and when we reached the door of an hotel the clerk and waiters looked at me with so supercilious an air, that I saw it would be necessary to assume an authoritative manner.
“Here, some of you lend a hand,” I exclaimed. “A pretty country this of yours, where a gentleman on landing can find neither porter nor carriage to convey his baggage! All I can hope is that your hotel will make some amends for the inconvenience I have suffered.”
The people, as I knew they would, began to defend their country, to assert that there was not a finer in the world; and then, to prove that their hotel was a good one, gave me one of the best rooms.
Galveston struck me as remarkable for the pungent sting of the mosquitoes, the undrinkable nature of the water, and the number of vociferating negroes, though there were some tolerable buildings and broadish streets. Perhaps I was prejudiced, for, not feeling very comfortable as to my safety, I was anxious to get out of the place again.
Having got a bill cashed at a somewhat high discount, and written home an account of my adventures to Aunt Becky, with a request that my epistle might be sent the round of the family, I put myself, with Peter and Ready, on board a steamer bound for Houston, the capital of Texas. We crossed the straits which separate Galveston from the mainland, and entering the Buffalo River found ourselves between lofty banks, covered in the richest profusion with magnolias and other flowering shrubs, and groves of lofty trees, among which flitted birds of the gayest plumage, while squirrels sported and leaped from branch to branch. Houston is picturesquely situated, and will, I have no doubt, become an important place, as it already shows signs of the enterprise of its Anglo-Saxon inhabitants. I slept there only one night. My room was on the ground floor. I found the four legs of my bed placed in as many basins of water. I inquired the reason, and was informed that it was to prevent the ants, which are not nautically inclined, from getting into it and devouring the inhabitant in his sleep. Peter’s bed, which was in the corner of the room, was similarly guarded, and Ready very wisely jumped up and slept on the foot of it.
The next morning Peter got up to procure water for me for washing, and to perform other duties of a valet; but scarcely had he donned his clothes than I saw him jumping and twisting about, and slapping himself in the most eccentric manner.
“Oh dear! oh dear! I shall be eaten, I shall be eaten!” he exclaimed, slapping himself harder and harder.
Ready barked, not knowing what to make of it, and jumped back on the bed again. Peter set to work to tear off his clothes, which he had placed on a chair, and of which a colony of ants had taken possession. He shook them out by hundreds, and then rushing out, he returned with a broom, with which he cleared the boards. The people of the house were rather astonished at my insisting on having a tub of cold water, which Peter at length brought me, and I managed to dress without being devoured by the ants.
Two hours after this we were rattling away along the corduroy road in a mail waggon, with a Kentuckian driver, through the forests of Texas. It was not altogether a pleasant style of locomotion, for we were bumped about terribly, our vehicle being innocent of springs; but it had the advantage of novelty. We stopped at nights at settlers’ huts, and slept on the roughest of rough beds, and sometimes without any beds at all except the bare boards and our cloaks; but I had made up my mind to grumble at nothing short of being scalped or positively starved. I had brought a saddle with me from England, and had procured another at Galveston for Peter, with the intention of purchasing at the first opportunity horses for riding and for carrying the luggage and tent, and starting away across country. I mentioned my intention to my Kentuckian driver, Silas Slag by name.
“Then I guess, stranger, that you don’t care very much about your scalp,” he observed, with a wink of his eye, as he made a significant gesture round his head.
“Why, who do you suppose would venture to take my scalp?” I asked, thinking that he was quizzing me, and wishing to turn the tables on him. “Don’t you know that if any one injures an Englishman, the British government will hunt him out, in whatever part of the world he may be, and make him pay dearly for his folly?”
“I guess, stranger, that the Comanches, or any other Redskin varmint, care no more for your British government than I do, and that is about as much as that panther there does for your dog.”
As Silas spoke, he pointed to a huge creature, which, half concealed by the tangled underwood of a tropical forest, lay crouching down about twenty yards ahead of us, and apparently prepared to spring out as we passed.
I had turned Ready out to stretch his legs, and he, unconscious of danger, was running on in high glee, abreast of the horses. In another instant he would have been in the jaws of the wild beast. I called to him to come to me, and at the same time lifted my rifle from the bottom of the waggon to be ready to fire. Silas whipped on his horses in the hopes of passing the creature before he could make his spring, but the animals, aware of the approach of an enemy, began to plunge and kick, and drove the waggon against some stumps of trees amid which the road wound, with a force which sent Peter sprawling at the bottom of it, and at the same instant the panther, with a tremendous bound, sprang on one of the leaders. The poor brute struggled so violently, that I was afraid of wounding it instead of killing the panther if I fired. At last I got a fair aim at the wild beast’s head, and to my infinite satisfaction over he rolled dead. The horses stood trembling in every limb, but I was afraid that they would dash on, before we could put the harness to rights, and leave us in the lurch. Once more, however, we were on the road, through a forest composed of oaks, maples, acacias, sycamores, and other trees with which I was familiar, and many others to be found in the tropics alone, interlaced with all sorts of creepers. On either side were a vast variety of flowers of every bright hue, but the most attractive were the red and white blossoms of the cotton trees, which, waving to and fro in the breeze, were dazzling to look at, while humming-birds, butterflies, and insects innumerable made the air appear as if filled with the most gorgeous gems. All this sort of scenery was very interesting, but I was not sorry when we reached the town of Billyville, I think it was called, bordering the prairies, where I was told that I could purchase horses, and find a trustworthy guide for my farther progress.
The name of Billyville was not significant of a very important place, nor had the town any great pretension of any sort, as it consisted of a few rough huts, while the surrounding fields were full of the stumps of the trees which had been cut down. I bought the horses required, and on the evening of my arrival a thin wiry little fellow presented himself, saying that his occupation was that of a hunter, and that he could guide me safely through any part of the North American continent. Whether he considered himself a white man or a Redskin I could not tell, while he spoke English, Spanish, and French with great volubility, though absurd as to correctness, and asserted that there was not an Indian dialect with which he was not acquainted. His garments were of fine tanned leather and ornamented with