Having spent last night in a Mexican saddle, our bullock-rug
in the sand appeared to me a most luxurious bed.
We hitched in at 5 A.M., and struck water at 9 A.M., which,
though muddy in appearance, was not so bad to drink.
I walked ahead with the Judge, who, when sober, is a
well-informed and sensible man. Mr Sargent and I are great friends, and, rough
as he is, we get on capitally together.
A Mr Ward, with three vehicles — a rival of Mr Sargent's — is
travelling in our company. He drove his buggy against a tree and knocked its
top off, to the intense delight of the latter.
We breakfasted under difficulties. The wind being high, it
drove up the sand in clouds and spoiled our food. Our travelling companion, Mr ——,
is a poor little weakly Israelite, but very inoffensive, although he speaks
with a horrible Yankee twang, which Mr Sargent and the Judge are singularly
free from.
We went on again at 2 P.M. I had a long talk with a big
mulatto slave woman, who was driving one of Ward's waggons. She told me she had
been raised in Tennessee, and that three years ago she had been taken from her
mistress for a bad debt, to their mutual sorrow. “Both,” she said, “cried
bitterly at parting.” She doesn't like San Antonio at all, “too much hanging
and murdering for me,” she said. She had seen a man hanged in the middle of the
day, just in front of her door.
Mr Sargent bought two chickens and some eggs at a ranch, but
one of the chickens got up a tree, and was caught and eaten by the Ward
faction. Our camp tonight looks very pretty by the light of the fires.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 36-7
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