These are the dangers attending travellers in the swamps, but there are
many others to be undergone in crossing lagoons, rivers, or small lakes.
All the streams, tributaries of the Sabine and of the Red River below
the great bend (which is twenty miles north of the Lost Prairie), have
swampy banks and muddy bottoms, and are impassable when the water is too
low to permit the horses to swim. Some of these streams have ferries,
and some lagoons have floating bridges in the neighbourhood of the
plantations; but as it is a new country, where government has as yet
done nothing, these conveniences are private property, and the owner of
a ferry, not being bound by a contract, ferries only when he chooses and
at the price he wishes to command.
I will relate a circumstance which will enable the reader to understand
the nature of the country, and the difficulties of overland travelling
in Texas. The great Sulphur Fork is a tributary of the Red River, and it
is one of the most dangerous. Its approach can only be made on both
sides through belts of swampy canebrakes, ten miles in breadth, and so
difficult to travel over, that the length of the two swamps, short as it
is, cannot be passed by a fresh and strong horse in less than fourteen
hours. At just half-way of this painful journey the river is to be
passed, and this cannot be done without a ferry, for the moment you
leave the canes, the shallow water begins, and the bottom is so soft,
that any object touching it must sink to a depth of several fathoms.
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