The Shoshones
have no particular name for it, but would sooner attack a grizzly bear
than this animal, which they have a great dread of, sometimes calling it
the evil spirit, sometimes the scourge, and many other such
appellations. It has never yet been described by any naturalist, and I
never yet saw one dead, although I have heard of their having
been killed.
In Texas, the country presents two different aspects, much at variance
with each other, the eastern borders, and sea-coast being only a
continuation of the cypress swamps, mud creeks, and cane-brakes of south
Arkansas, and west Louisiana; while, on the contrary, the north and west
offer much the same topography as that of the countries I have just
delineated. The climate in Texas is very healthy two hundred miles from
the sea, and one hundred west of the Sabine, which forms the eastern
boundary of Texas; but to the east and south the same diseases and
epidemics prevail as in Louisiana, Alabama, and the Floridas.
The whole of Texas is evidently of recent formation, all the saline
prairies east of the Rio Grande being even now covered with shells of
all the species common to the Gulf of Mexico, mixed up with skeletons of
sharks, and now and then with petrified turtle, dolphin, rock fish, and
bonitas.
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