Journey through Texas, or, A saddle-trip on the southwestern frontier : with a statistical appendix Page: 60 of 552
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ROUTE TO TEXAS.
25
around without their notice. And I cannot say with candor,
that taking the whole distance, such was our own observation.
The advantage, if any, is slight on the side of the free states.
They certainly have more neat and numerous villages, and I
judge more improved lands along the river bank; but the dwell-
ings, not counting negro huts, appeared to us nearly on a par,
and the farms, at a rough guess, of about equal value.
What is most striking everywhere, is the immensity of the
wasted territory, rather than the beauty of the improved. The
river banks seem, as you glide for hours through them, without
seeing a house or a field, as if hardly yet rescued from the beasts
and the savages, so little is the work done compared with that
which remains to do. Near the mouth of the Ohio, this is still
more striking, and on the Mississippi the impression is absolutely
painful, so rich yet so entirely desolate and unused is the whole
vast region. There is soil enough here, of the richest class, to
feed and clothe, with its cotton and its corn, ten-fold our whole
present population.
SMITHLAND--MOUTH OF THE CUMBERLAND.
At about 1 A. M., we found ourselves alone with a shivering
boy, almost speechless with sleep, upon a wharf-boat, looking
with regret on the fast-drifting lights of the Pike. Following,
by a blurred lantern, his dubious guidance, we climbed a clay
bank, and found ourselves shortly before our beds. At a first
experience-of a Western, viz., one-sheeted, bed, I was somewhat
taken aback; and, determining not to abandon my hold on civil-
ization sooner than necessary, I unconscionably caused the cham-
bermaid, who was also the landlady, to be roused at this late
hour, and had, amid much grumbling and tedium, my bed put in
2
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Olmsted, Frederick Law. Journey through Texas, or, A saddle-trip on the southwestern frontier : with a statistical appendix, book, January 1, 1857; New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2407/m1/60/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.