Part 7

Soon after we had unpacked for the night, six Texan Rangers, of "Wood's" regiment, rode up to us. They were very picturesque fellows; tall, thin, and ragged, but quite gentlemanlike in their manners.

We are always to sleep in the open until we arrive at San Antonio, and I find my Turkish lantern most useful at night.

A lantern for a candle, made of white linen and wire, which collapses when not in use. They are always used in the streets of Constantinople. The Texans admired it immensely.

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15th April (Wednesday).--I slept well last night in spite of the tics and fleas, and we started at 5.30 P.M. After passing a dead rattlesnake eight feet long, we reached water at 7 A.M.

At 9 A.M. we espied the cavalcade of General Magruder passing us by a parallel track about half a mile distant. M'Carthy and I jumped out of the carriage, and I ran across the prairie to cut him off, which I just succeeded in doing by borrowing the spare horse of the last man in the train.

I galloped up to the front, and found the General riding with a lady who was introduced to me as Mrs ----, an undeniably pretty woman, wife to an officer on Magruder's staff, and she is naturally the object of intense attention to all the good-looking officers who accompany the General through this desert.

General Magruder, who commands in Texas, is a fine soldierlike man, of about fifty-five, with broad shoulders, a florid complexion, and bright eyes. He wears his whiskers and mustaches in the English fashion, and he was dressed in the Confederate grey uniform. He was kind enough to beg that I would turn back and accompany him in his tour through Texas. He had heard of my arrival, and was fully determined I should do this. He asked after several officers of my regiment whom he had known when he was on the Canadian frontier. He is a Virginian, a great talker, and has always been a great ally of English officers.

He insisted that M'Carthy and I should turn and dine with him, promising to provide us with horses to catch up Mr Sargent.

After we had agreed to do this, I had a long and agreeable conversation with the General, who spoke of the Puritans with intense disgust, and of the first importation of them as "that pestiferous crew of the Mayflower;" but he is by no means rancorous against individual Yankees. He spoke very favourably of M'Clellan, whom he knew to be a gentleman, clever, and personally brave, though he might lack moral courage to face responsibility. Magruder had commanded the Confederate troops at Yorktown which opposed M'Clellan's advance. He told me the different dodges he had resorted to, to blind and deceive the latter as to his (Magruder's) strength; and he spoke of the intense relief and amusement with which he had at length seen M'Clellan with his magnified army begin to break ground before miserable earthworks, defended only by 8000 men. Hooker was in his regiment, and was "essentially a mean man and a liar." Of Lee and Longstreet he spoke in terms of the highest admiration.

Magruder was an artilleryman, and has been a good deal in Europe; and having been much stationed on the Canadian frontier, he became acquainted with many British officers, particularly those in the 7th Hussars and Guards.

He had gained much credit from his recent successes at Galveston and Sabine Pass, in which he had the temerity to attack heavily-armed vessels of war with wretched river steamers manned by Texan cavalrymen.

His principal reason for visiting Brownsville was to settle about the cotton trade. He had issued an edict that half the value of cotton exported must be imported in goods for the benefit of the country (government stores). The President had condemned this order as illegal and despotic.

The officers on Magruder's Staff are a very good-looking, gentlemanlike set of men. Their names are--Major Pendleton, Major Wray, Captain De Ponte, Captain Alston, Captain Turner, Lieutenant-Colonel M'Neil, Captain Dwyer, Dr Benien, Lieutenant Stanard, Lieutenant Yancey, and Major Magruder. The latter is nephew to the General, and is a particularly good-looking young fellow. They all live with their chief on an extremely agreeable footing, and form a very pleasant society. At dinner I was put in the post of honour, which is always fought for with much acrimony--viz., the right of Mrs ----. After dinner we had numerous songs. Both the General and his nephew sang; so also did Captain Alston, whose corpulent frame, however, was too much for the feeble camp-stool, which caused his sudden disappearance in the midst of a song with a loud crash. Captain Dwyer played the fiddle very well, and an aged and slightly-elevated militia general brewed the punch and made several "elegant" speeches. The latter was a rough-faced old hero, and gloried in the name of M'Guffin. On these festive occasions General Magruder wears a red woollen cap, and fills the president's chair with great aptitude.

It was 11.30 before I could tear myself away from this agreeable party; but at length I effected my exit amidst a profusion of kind expressions, and laden with heaps of letters of introduction.

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16th April (Thursday).--Now our troubles commenced. Seated in Mexican saddles, and mounted on raw-boned mustangs, whose energy had been a good deal impaired by a month's steady travelling on bad food, M'Carthy and I left the hospitable mess-tent about midnight, and started in search of Mr Sargent and his vehicle. We were under the guidance of two Texan rangers.

About daylight we hove in sight of "Los Animos," a desolate farmhouse, in the neighbourhood of which Mr Sargent was supposed to be encamped; but nowhere could we find any traces of him.

We had now reached the confines of a dreary region, sixty miles in extent, called "The Sands," in comparison with which the prairie and chaparal were luxurious.

The sand being deep and the wind high, we could not trace the carriage; but we soon acquired a certainty that our perfidious Jehu had decamped, leaving us behind.

We floundered about in the sand, cursing our bad luck, cursing Mr Sargent, and even the good Magruder, as the indirect cause of our wretchedness. Our situation, indeed, was sufficiently deplorable. We were without food or water in the midst of a desert: so were our horses, which were nearly done up. Our bones ached from the Mexican saddles; and, to complete our misery, the two rangers began to turn restive and talk of returning with the horses. At this, the climax of our misfortunes, I luckily hit upon a Mexican, who gave us intelligence of our carriage; and with renewed spirits, but very groggy horses, we gave chase.

But never did Mr Sargent's mules walk at such a pace; and it was 9 A.M. before we overtook them. My animal had been twice on his head, and M'Carthy was green in the face with fatigue and rage. Mr Sargent received us with the greatest affability; and we were sensible enough not to quarrel with him, although M'Carthy had made many allusions as to the advisability of shooting him.

We had been nine and a half hours in the saddle, and were a good deal exhausted. Our sulky Texan guides were appeased with bacon, coffee, and $5 in coin.

We halted till 2 P.M., and then renewed our struggle through the deep sandy wilderness; but though the services of the Judge's horse were put into requisition, we couldn't progress faster than two miles an hour.

Mule-driving is an art of itself, and Mr Sargent is justly considered a professor at it.

He is always yelling--generally imprecations of a serio-comic character. He rarely flogs his mules; but when one of them rouses his indignation by extraordinary laziness, he roars out, "Come here, Judge, with a big club, and give him h----ll." Whilst the animal is receiving such discipline as comes up to the judge's idea of the infernal regions, Mr Sargent generally remarks, "I wish you was Uncle Abe, I'd make you move, you G----d d----n son of a ----." His idea of perfect happiness seems to be to have Messrs Lincoln and Seward in the shafts. Mules travel much better when other mules are in front of them; and another dodge to which Mr Sargent continually resorts is, to beat the top of the carriage and kick the foot-board, which makes a noise, and gratifies the mules quite as much as licking them. Mr Sargent accounts for his humanity by saying, "It's the worst plan in the world licking niggers or mules, because the more you licks 'em, the more they wants it."

We reached or "struck" water at 5.30 P.M.; but, in spite of its good reputation, it was so salt as to be scarcely drinkable. A number of cotton waggons, and three carriages belonging to Mr Ward, were also encamped with us.

We have only made sixteen miles to-day.