St. Louis' Isle, or Texiana; with additional observations made in the United States and in Canada

Front matter

ST. LOUIS' ISLE, OR TEXIANA, <yc. 8,-c. Un UaiAiwLel .-< VValtcm. Iali.ograji'h.er.s. ST. LOUIS' ISLE, UR TEXIANA ; WITH ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS MADE IK THE UNITED STATES AND IN CANADA BY CHARLES HOOTON, AUTHOR OF "LAUNCELOT VTIDGE," " COLIN CLINK," "BILBERRY THURLAND," ETC. etc. etc. ©Utth a portrait, AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON : PUBLISHED BY SIMMONDS AND WARD, 6, BARGE YARD, BUCKLERSBURY. 1847. L0ND0II : PRINTED TY H. I. STEVENS, PIIlLrOT LANE, FENCI1 UT! CH STREET. DEDICATION. TU MISS GUILLELMINE JANE PRESCOTT, OF NEW ORLEANS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED. AS A SLIGHT PROOF THAT THOUGH PAST KINDNESSES ARE TOO OFTEN AND TOO APT TO BE FORGOTTEN, THERE IS NO RULE WITHOUT ITS EXCEPTION.

Preface

. The following few chapters upon a country which I had the misfortune to visit in hope, and return from — not in despair, but with " hope deferred," were written in great part on a bed of sickness, and while supported on pillows. At such a time the mind is very indifferently prepared — nay, perhaps ought to be considered unfit for labour and exertion. But as at that period the conclusion appeared in medical eyes exceedingly doubtful, I determined, if possible, while there was yet time, in some shape or other to lay my experiences of Texas before the world, and to the utmost of my ability persuade, through the influence of facts, any projecting Emigrants from following in the same fatal footsteps. This, I trust, will plead sufficiently for the desultory manner in which these recollections are put together, and for an occa-

PREFACE.

. sional looseness of style which, under circumstances of a more favourable nature, might be considered inexcusable. Six years have now elapsed since the date of the commence ment of the events which this little volume records. Between then and now, circumstances of a political nature have taken place on the other side of the Atlantic which put an entirely new face upon the government of " the State of Texas." That the country must ultimately gain in consequence of the new position in which she has placed herself, cannot for a moment be doubted by any one familiar with her former weakness — ■ her literal incapacity to help herself. Time, however — long time must pass away before these anticipated beneficial influ ences can be perceptibly felt. The next generation or two hence may find some difference between their own lives, and the recol lected tale of the lives of their forefathers, the settlers of the present day ; but small hope can be reasonably entertained that for the existing generation, Texas, under her new form of government, can offer the slightest atom of additional tempta tion to Northern Emigrants, to what was offered when the following pages were written.

That these were few indeed, the reader will very shortly discover. Besides, whatever alteration the form of government may have undergone, and however much for the individual benefit of the territory, it must be kept in mind that the climate has not changed along with it. There still remain the same sun, the same brick-burned earth — the same pestilent, sweltering

PREFACE.

. IX bayous, in which the fish that cannot escape get cooked (though not literally boiled) to death, as before. Hence none of the recent changes relative to this country, in any degree worthy of a moment's consideration, affect the integrity and value of the character herein given of it. The country is still the same, and the objections against it are as potent and incontrovertible as ever. Of the few sketches which are interspersed through the volume, no more can be said than that they convey a just and accurate idea of the nature of the place in which they were made. Having little or no pretensions to artistical merit, they are offered simply as visible representations of facts stated in the letter-press. THE AUTHOR. Nottingham, Jan. 18th, 1847. ri FACE 1 20 43 CONTENTS ST. LOUIS' ISLE, OR TEXIANA.

Chapter I

Threatened Shipwreck— Arrival at Galveston— Description of the City- Assassinations — Gaming — Story of Mexican Thompson

Chapter II

Bowie-knife described — Colonel Bowie — Unhealthiness of the Country — Appearance of the People — Our Emigrant Band — Austin — Galveston Doctors — Story of Tom the Sailor — Southern Planters and their Annual Migrations — Slavery — Black and White Labour — Mexican Inroads — Unsafe Travelling — The Santa Fe Expedition — Story of M'Allister — Texas bankrupt and powerless — Public Hospital — Failures of Intending Settlers

Chapter III

My own Location — Bayous — Gardening — Pig-shooting — Cat-killing — Texan Courtship — Scarcity of Women — The President and the Washerwoman — Weather and Climate CONTENTS. XII

Chapter IV

Romance and Reality— Cedar Bayou— Fate of L.'s Party— A Bull-dog devoured— Wild Cattle— A delirious Crew at Sea— Miserable Death of Henry J.— Music in Galveston— The Staffordshire Curate's Son— The old Vintner— Story of poor Tom the Ship-boy 60

Chapter V

Conclusion of our whole Party's Adventures and Experiences — The Snake-hunter— The Professional Man— The Brothers S.— The Family Man — The Florist So

Chapter VI

Canvassing for an Election — Compliment to Commodore Moore — Point Bolivar — A Prairie Feast — Quarrelling — The Lady Mayoress — Poverty of the Corporation 98

Chapter VII

Boating Excursion to Edward's Point — Dr. W.'s House — Description of the Point — Arrival of Spaniards — Fishing for Terrapins — Alligator-gars — Redfish — Alligator-shooting — Line-fishing — The Red Bug — Incidents with Snakes — Slaughter-house Dogs, an Adventnre — Lafitte, the Pirate's Mate — A Texan Duel — Frontier Murderers — Mock Indian Thieves — Tom the Slave 112

Chapter V

Route from New York to Montreal — Saratoga — Bloody Pond — Ticonderoga — Lake Champlain — Montreal — Emigrant Sheds — St. Lawrence — Quebec — Indian Summer — Conclusion ILLUSTRATIONS. Portrait Facing the Title. Settlers' Houses on the Prairie . . . . . . . . . . Page 9 Scene on a Bayou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Galveston from the Gulf Shore 69 General Hospital 122 Fever Burial-ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ssc. <^c.

Chapter I

How natural is the propensity in man to seek for El Dorados, Happy Lands, wild Gardens of Eden, where flowers grow without cultivation — where beasts of chase are not monopolised by the arm of aristocratic power — where Governments are as liberal as the air — where labour reaps its own results, and lastly, and above all else, where a man's back is not exactly either broken or very badly humped by too heavy a load of that most solid and dense of all known substances, commonly recognised under the name of taxation ! Poets, happy race ! have the faculty of manufacturing their own Paradises at home, without encountering sea-sickness and all the perils of the great deep before arriving at them. They can see happiness in the landscape of a murky London street, and, by an alchemy more abstruse and subtle than was that of Roger Bacon, convert a garret into a garden, a washhouse into a flower-pot, and the dirty dimity of a bedstead into the Tyrian purple drawn around some beautiful ideal Paphian queen.

Ordinary people, however, are compelled, in the course of their search after a blissful seat on earth, to go another and quite a different way to work. The dirty lanes of mere matter-of-fact must be gone through — the mire of pure animal misery must be trampled in, until both body and mind are almost brought to a stand-still ; and long and heavy must be the labour before the garden wilderness smiles as it ought to do, and n enables the labourer therein to laugh outright as he ought to do, from very joy at his changed condition. To speak individually, from my very youth upwards I had a strong desire, one day or another, to squeeze myself through the gate of some one or other of these (next to heaven itself) most-to-be-desired places. It so happened, however, that up to the year of Grace 1840, I con tented myself with thinking about it, and abiding my appointed time.

At the latter end of December of that eventful year, after having carefully weighed in the balance the respective merits of different para disaical parts of the earth, including New Zealand, and Australia (the present prison, alas ! of my friend Richard Howitt), I finally made up my mind to go to Texas. The very name of Mexico, with its marvellous associations, — its Montezumas, its magnificent vegetation, its old renown in the romance of American history, — ever threw out attractions to my imagination. To add to them, the various books and pamphlets written upon that country, which happened to fall into my hands, con tributed a golden store of almost unalloyed " sweet promise ;" while the political relations of the young Republic so exactly coincided with all my preconceived notions of Governmental purity and integrity, that it is no wonder the seal was at once and conclusively affixed to the bond of my determination to depart forthwith.

Accordingly, after much delay and trouble, occasioned by the unprin cipled conduct of the ship-brokers, we left the London Docks on the 28th of December, 1840, with twenty-one adult passengers, male and female, and eight or ten children. Although our voyage was not with out its curious incident and interest, I shall not linger over its descrip tion in tbis place, but proceed at once to relate in what manner we first touched upon the Texan shore. About half-past six o'clock in the evening of the 25th of March,— many of the passengers being on deck for the benefit of the air, unsus picious, and wrapped in the conscious security of having passed the great deep unharmed, — with the suddenness ofa falling thunderbolt the ship struck upon the bottom. The shock made her shiver from head to stern, like a leaf in the wind, or a creature alive that has received its deathblow, and trembles nervously before it falls.

For a moment or two every soul was dumb. The water heaved and swelled around us, and as the waves passed on and left the vessel to sink again, crash we came again upon the bottom, — and again, and again. And then fol lowed shrieking of women and children, and weeping and praying, shouting and swearing, and hurrying half-unconsciously and desperately to and fro. Many of the sailors — men of courage and desperate daring on any or all other occasions — now seemed to lose all confidence, and with the loss of confidence all power ; while the Captain (who hap pened to be below when the vessel first struck) rushed instantly up the stairs, and in an agony of terror ran about the deck, crying, " The Lord preserve us !" — " God Almighty have mercy upon us !" and using other expressions of a similar nature, but which of course carried little comfort to the already hopeless hearts of the females and the more timid of the stronger sex.

Twilight was drawing on. That sun, half under the horizon, was gazed on tearfully by many wild eyes as the last sun they would ever see ; while the very soul seemed to sink at the dread consciousness that night and an undug and tombless grave were closing over us for ever. During this time, the ship was put upon many various tacks in order to try in what direction we could make our escape from the shoal. At length she again floated, and we steered direct from land and towards the open part of the Gulf of Mexico. So close upon the tropics, day and night are almost as distinct, and as abrupt in their distinctness, as dark and light painted close together on a board. There is little blend ing of the two together, — almost nothing of that warm, dreamy, and angelic twilight whieh in more northern climates gives to romance one half its ideality, and to love one of its deepest fascinations.

Darkness fell, and fear became more fearful than before. The deck was crowded with anxious but invisible faces, and all ears were strained to catch the tidings minute by minute communicated in a musical, melancholy tone by the seaman at the lead, as he sang out with each haul of the sound ing-line, " Quarter less two!" — "Deep two!" — "Half-quarter two!" and the like. If we gained a quarter of a fathom, there arose beneath that dark canopy of sky a general and very heartfelt " Thank God for that !" in which even the old skipper himself was not too heroic to join. The pumps were tried, and, to our surprise as well as gratification, found not to have more water than before. The old ship had clearly sprung no leak. About two o'clock in the morning, however, the man at the helm discovered for the first time that the vessel refused to obey her rudder, and declared his conviction that we had lost it when we struck, and had been sailing all night without one,— or rather, perhaps, it may be said, under the especial guidance of the stump thereof only.

Within a short time afterwards, the anchor was dropped ; and early after daylight on the following morning, what remained of the helm was unshipped, when it was discovered that the post was snapped asunder, and the whole of the rudder part had been carried away. All hands on board (passengers included) were now busily employed in manufactur ing a new helm out of three spars rough from the forest and a few old planks which luckily chanced to be on board. These were lashed together and nailed as well as circumstances and the rude nature of the materials would permit ; while, in order to give this poor substitute for a rudder the requisite ponderosity in the water, a quantity of broken flints, brought from Ramsgate by way of ballast, were inserted into the interstices between the boards on either side.

When finished and shipped, it was calculated to last, with, moderate weather, about three days at farthest ; while hard weather and a rough sea would, in all pro bability, have carried it off in as many hours. To increase the delights of our situation, it was now discovered, on examination, that but fifty gallons of water remained, while there were above forty souls on board. The victuals also ran short, partly in consequence of the unusual length of our passage, but much more in consequence of the vessel having in the first instance been despatched from London upon such rigidly econo mical principles, that she might more aptly have been regarded in the light of a sort of floating parish workhouse, than a vessel carrying such a number of human beings, and bound upon a voyage of rather preca rious duration in point of time.

This, indeed, is a point upon which emigrants (of the poorer classes especially), to any part of the world, generally find themselves most miserably misled and deceived. To find it out, however, only when in " blue water," is too late for the applica tion of any remedy : patience and endurance are the most available virtues during the remainder of the passage. Perhaps on some suture occasion I may give, for the especial benefit of the thousands of emigrants who annually leave our shores, such an insight into the system pursued by " passenger-brokers" in our sea-ports as cannot fail at least to be highly useful to them, even if it answer not the higher purpose of assisting in the correction of a deeply gross and infamous, though too little understood, abuse. Not to prolong the story of this our first misfortune, let it suffice the reader to be informed that after two other days' blind sailing in fog and mist, which rendered the sun invisible, so that no observation could be taken, we anchored again on the night of Saturday, March 27th, in tending to remain there until the return of daylight, and, perhaps, clearer weather, should enable us the better to ascertain our actual posi tion.

About midnight, however, the wind rose until it blew almost a hurricane, and the sea rolled in magnificent and lengthened billows, until our old ship pitched head and stern, as though about to dive end ways into the sand below, and reeled from side to side so deeply as to threaten every instant to lie down like an exhausted and too-toil-worn a thing to struggle for liberty any longer. At the same time, her timbers trembled and shrieked with the prodigious strain upon them ; and she tugged madly at the chain cable by which her anchor held us to the place, as might some infuriated and unmanageable wild beast at the lashings that fix him to the ground. About half-past three, the morn ing being pitch-dark, the cable snapped suddenly in two, and we drifted rapidly towards the land, and those formidable breakers whicli ever lastingly dash with such impetuous violence upon the whole shelving coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

In this second emergency, the pusilla niminity of our Captain evinced itself in the same manner as before : he appeared half-bewildered, and as though he now finally gave us up for lost ; but, by the combined exertions of all on board, a second anchor was soon slipped, and the vessel was brought-to in about five fathoms water. When daylight at length broke, the sky seemed still almost as heavy and black as night; and the "ground swell" — the result of the preceding storm — was absolutely fearful to look upon. Signals of dis tress were now hoisted, but, owing to the fog which enveloped the land, were not seen until late in the day. About four o'clock p.m. the pilot boat, which had long been seen approaching, reached us, and on the same night we anchored just outside that shifting sand-bar which renders the harbour of Galveston so difficult to enter — and, in the opinion of many men much better qualified to judge correctly in this matter than my self, will ever prevent this, the most favourable port on the whole Texan sea-board, from becoming a place of any really extensive mari time commerce.

This sand-bank, or " bar," proved to be the same upon which we had struck four days previously, our vessel at that time drawing only nine feet water. Statements have repeatedly been made, calculated to lead to much misconception on this subject, and to direct that spirit of enterprise towards Texas, and on the part of inexperienced and far-off individuals, whicb eventually resulted in partial, if not en tire, disappointment and disaster. It has been said that in certain tides, sixteen feet of water are upon the bar : this may be the case occa sionally ; but it is not upon occasional and comparatively rare chances of ingress and egress to and from a port that commerce by sea can beneficially be rendered dependent. One of the only two pilots in Galveston (Mr. G. S — — , formerly of Liverpool) has several times assured me, that, in general, no vessel can pass with safety that requires a greater depth of water than thirteen feet — that being the average sounding upon the bank.

He also states, that the bar itself has changed its position nearly half a mile within the last three or four years. These facts, for as such they are given, are most admirably illustrated by the appearance of the Bay of Galveston itself. Sprinkled with wrecks of various appearances and sizes — all alike gloomy, however, in their looks and associations — it strikes the heart of a stranger as a sort of ocean-cemetery, a sea churchyard, in which broken masts and shat tered timbers, half-buried in quicksands, seem to remain above the surface of the treacherous waters only to remind the living, like dead camels on a level desert, of the destruction that has gone before, and yet awaits many who may come after. It may not be improper, while on this subject, just to add, that a current produced by the rivers from the uplands which fall into the bay, runs through it to the sea, and forms the only safe track, like a narrow lane for a coach, down which ships reach the city.

The remaininomass of water, at least three miles across from Galveston to Pelican Island opposite, ds so shallow, that, under the influence of particular winds, combined perhaps with other causes, it may in certain places be waded across with safety ! Such, then, is the plain truth, as far as I could ascertain it, respecting the famous port of Galveston — the intended mart of all the rest of Texas, and the place from which all the, as yet, unproduced produce ofthe interior, the dreamed-of wealth of thousands of dreamed-of settlers, is to be exported to all parts of the civilised world. About noon, on the 29th of March, we landed in reality. From the sea, the appearance of Galveston is that of a fine city of great extent, built close upon the edge of the water ; but its glory vanishes gradually in proportion to the nearness of approach of the spectator, until on his arrival at the end of one of the long, rude, wood projections, called wharfs, which shoot out some quarter of a mile into the shallows of the bay, he finds nothing but a poor straggling collection of weather boarded frame-houses, beautifully embellished with whitewash, (they may be mistaken for white marble from the Gulf,) and extending, without measurable depth, about the length of two miles of string.

It presents in this respect a bold front to the enemy, but, like a bulwark made of brown pasteboard, has more appearance than power, and in the event of a war with the Mexicans, might, in the course of a few hours, be swept from the face ofthe earth by a brisk and determined cannonade of nothing more formidable than dried peas, instead of grape-shot, and bay-shells by way of bombs. As Galveston is at present (and, in ad probability, for a very long time to come will continue to be) considered the head-quarters of modern Texas in population, in commercial importance, in the civilisation of its society, in religion, education, morals, and literature, I shall be rather more particular than otherwise might be deemed needful in its description touching all these matters ; trusting thereby to convey to the reader a more perfect facsimile of things of this kind in the new Republic, than all the laudatory pens of all preceding writers put to gether have yet attempted to give.

When a man reads of a " city," he very naturally associates with that word the idea implied by it at home. He almost unconsciously jumps to the conclusion, that a city in a newly-founded country is, if not quite so elegant externally, yet pretty much the same sort of thing as a city in an old one. If he be told there is already a university established, his mind reverts to Cambridge and Oxford ; education assumes her most imposing aspect, and learning peeps out in cap and gown from her palace of books, surrounded by a splendid court of intellectuals, and raising up, as her most solemn duty is, a train of graceless rascals, on whose heads the stamp of manhood is not yet fully impressed, but who are destined to become, each in his degree, the lights of our modern world. Should he be told of civilisation, — arts, sciences, and those numberless and nameless refinements which constitute, in his view, the stock-meaning of civilisation, instantly rise up to view, and mentally he beholds the strange phenomena of intellectual and moral power rising unsupported in the midst of a natural wilderness, on which even the hand of agriculture, the first task-master of physical labour, has not as yet left so much as its lightest impression.

He is told of busy ports, and harbours dotted with the flags of all nations — of steamers plying up and down, and to and fro ; and at once, by the most easy and natural of all associations, he sees a floating forest of branchless and leafless pines, throwing their streamers abroad upon the air, over the bosom of some Thames or Mersey yet unknown to fame, and exalting, by their commerce, the humble and industrious pedlars of the newly-planted cities into merchants who ere long shall become like princes. Such and similar are the impressions almost invariably made upon home-bred readers and aspiring emigrants by the perusal of favourable commissioners' very impartial reports, the works of interested or hasty and incompetent parties, and the inspection of maps upon which cities, only just conceived by the parental surveyor, are laid down as fully grown, and over which it is quite as easy to travel four or five hundred miles by the aid of a scale and a pair of compasses, as it is to walk as many single miles along the nasty, dirty roads of the " Old Country," from one's own house to the next village.

It is not a little surprising, too, with what unexpected ease a man fells imaginary timber growing upon a map ; selects his bit of " happy land " upon the bend of some delightful river ; knocks up his loohouse, or " shanty," as the case may be ; puts to the rout whole bodies of hostile and obnoxious Indians ; kills his own buffalo and deer ; catches more than he can consume every time he goes fishino (since fish, in places of this description, are generally of such a gener- Hullm..sm.d6l felWalton Iitfkcgrapli-prs. SETTLERS HOUSES ON THE PRAIRIE. ous nature, that they positively volunteer into your net, whether you want them or not) ; and, in short, succeeds so admirably in the country of his adoption (sitting all the while by his fireside, with his pipe and pot of English ale), that, in the course of a very few years, he finds himself perfectly independent, and as happy as a little rural king.

More surprising, however, than all this, is the reality — the fact against the fiction. It is usually a rather melancholy surprisal, too. The flourishing " city," rising in importance, in commerce, and in wealth, he discovers, in the majority of cases, to be not half so large as many an Englsh village ; its houses being of the poorest and most temporary nature, and reared here and there, and anywhere, with no more apparent regularity than is displayed by a crop of mushrooms that have suddenly popped their heads up some dewy morning in the prolific area of a sheep-pasture. Its " University " is considerably less than a country pedagogue's common school, both in its means of education and the number of its students ; while the magnificent pile of building in wbich the mysteries of language and mathematics are carried on, is built in the finest style of log and weatherboard architecture — the columns that support it being rough, unwrought cedar stumps, and the groining of the arched roof, the bare rasters and laths upon which the shingles are nailed.

The "commercial importance" of which he had read, is found to consist principally in the mutual peddling and swindling carried on by the inhabitants amongst themselves and their country neighbours ; while the remaining portion is made up of individual or associated monopolies, whose strength is obtained, and power perpetuated, by the employment of much greater capital than the hosts of new settlers commonly possess. Such, at least, is the reality in Galveston, as contrasted with the imaginary picture drawn at home by the intending emigrant from the delightful sketches made by those fanciful and highly-poetical gentlemen whose various works upon Texas are already before the public. The forest of masts, bearing the flags of many nations, dwindles into a few straggling poles, bearing the " star spangled " bunting of the States, the " lone star " of Texas itself, and, possibly once in the course of four or five months, the red flag of St. George of England, — all, however, looking as idle, as melancholy, and as lonely, as so many half-starved cormorants, watching, from their c perch of stone, whom or what they can devour.

The arrival or de parture of a steamer from or to New Orleans creates a sensation in the place, and two or three hours of common burry and bustle along the wooden pier at the foot of which she may happen to come to anchor : after this, all relapses again into mere inanity, and the public mind, for want of something better to do, falls back upon its stock subject of speculation, touching tbat most interesting of all intellectual items — " What comes next?" Literature and art, though words to be found in a dictionary, have nothing correspondent to them in Texas. The literature there is em bodied in some twenty newspapers, of the most miserable description. The editor of each usually combines within the compass of his own body, proprietor and compositor too. This trinity of the printing office clips out extracts, writes original drivel of his own, takes in both advertisements and the pay for them, notices a marriage for a bit of bride-cake and a gallon of whisky, works at his " case " along with his men (being not a whit more important than any one of them), and pub lishes the whole collection in his own especial name.