At 1 A.M. this morning, our slumbers on the bullock-rug were
disturbed by a sudden and most violent thunder-storm. M'Carthy and I had only
just time to rush into the carriage, and hustle our traps underneath it, when
the rain began to descend in torrents.
We got inside with the little Jew (who was much alarmed by
the thunder); whilst Mr Sargent and the Judge crept underneath.
The rain lasted two hours; and at daylight we were able to refresh
ourselves by drinking the water from the puddles, and effect a start.
But fate seemed adverse to our progress. No sooner had we
escaped from the sand than we fell into the mud, which was still worse.
We toiled on till 11.30 A.M., at which hour we reached “King's
Ranch,” which for
several days I had heard spoken of as a sort of Elysium, marking as it does the
termination of the sands, and the commencement of comparative civilisation.
We halted in front of the house, and after cooking and
eating, I walked up to the “ranch,” which is a comfortable, well-furnished
wooden building.
Mr and Mrs King had gone to Brownsville; but we were
received by Mrs Bee, the wife of the Brownsville general, who had heard I was
on the road.
She is a nice lively little woman, a red-hot Southerner,
glorying in the facts that she has no Northern relations or friends, and that
she is a member of the Church of England.
Mr King first came to Texas as a steamboat captain, but now
owns an immense tract of country, with 16,000 head of cattle, situated,
however, in a wild and almost uninhabited district. King's Ranch is distant
from Brownsville only 125 miles, and we have been six days in reaching it.
After drying our clothes and our food after the rain of last
night, we started again at 2.30 P.M.
We now entered a boundless and most fertile prairie, upon
which, as far as the eye could reach, cattle were feeding.
Bulls and cows, horses and mares, came to stare at us as we
passed. They all seemed sleek and in good condition, yet they get nothing but
what they can pick up on the prairie.
I saw a man on horseback kill a rabbit with his revolver. I
also saw a scorpion for the first time.
We halted at 5.30 P.M., and had to make our fire principally
of cow-dung, as wood is very scarce on this prairie.
We gave up the Judge's horse at King's Ranch. The lawgiver
now rides on the box with Mr Sargent.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 39-41
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