17th April (Friday).—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.
