We had anticipated regaling ourselves with the juicy humps of the
buffaloes which we should kill, but although we had entered the very
heart of their great pasture-land, we had not met with one, nor even
with a ground-hog; a snake, or a frog. One evening, the pangs of hunger
became so sharp that we were obliged to chew tobacco and pieces of
leather to allay our cravings; and we determined that if, the next day
at sunset we had no better fortune, we would draw lots to kill one of
our horses. That evening we could not sleep, and as murmuring was of no
avail, the divine entertained us with a Texan story, just, as he said,
to pump the superfluous air out of his body. I shall give it in his
own terms:--
"Well, I was coming down the Wabash River (Indiana), when, as it happens
nine times out of ten, the steam-boat got aground, and that so firmly,
that there was no hope of her floating again till the next flood; so I
took my wallet, waded for two hundred yards, with the water to my knees,
till I got safe on shore, upon a thick-timbered bank, full of
rattle-snakes, thorns of the locust-tree, and spiders' webs, so strong,
that I was obliged to cut them with my nose, to clear the way before me.
I soon got so entangled by the vines and the briars that I thought I had
better turn my back to the stream till I should get to the upland, which
I could now and then perceive through the clearings opened between the
trees by recent thunder-storms.
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