Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/31

 stricter with them, they'd have more respect for him, and be more contented, too."

"Never do to be too slack with niggers."

We were riding in company, to-day, with a California drover, named Rankin. He was in search of cattle to drive across the plains. He had taken a drove before from Illinois, and told us that people in that State, of equal circumstances, lived ten times better than here, in all matters of comfort and refinement. He had suffered more in travelling in Texas, than ever on the plains or the mountains. Not long before, in driving some mules with his partner, they came to a house which was the last on the road for fourteen miles. They had nothing in the world in the house but a few ears of corn, they were going to grind in their steel mill for their own breakfast, and wouldn't sell on any terms. "We hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, but we actually could get nothing. The only other thing in the cabin, that could be eaten, was a pile of deer-skins, with the hair on. We had to stake our mules, and make a fire, and coil around it. About twelve o'clock there came a norther. We heard it coming, and it made us howl. We didn't sleep a wink for cold."

Houston.—We were sitting on the gallery of the hotel. A tall, jet black negro came up, leading by a rope a downcast mulatto, whose hands were lashed by a cord to his waist, and whose face was horribly cut, and dripping with blood. The wounded man crouched and leaned for support against one of the columns of the gallery—faint and sick.

"What's the matter with that boy?" asked a smoking lounger.

"I run a fork into his face," answered the negro.

"What are his hands tied for?"