e beyond the grasp of his
country's laws.

They reached Nacogdoches without any special adventure. It was a
flourishing little Mexican town of about one thousand inhabitants,
situated in a romantic dell, about sixty miles west of the River
Sabine. The Mexicans and the Indians were very nearly on an
intellectual and social equality. Groups of Indians, harmless and
friendly, were ever sauntering through the streets of the little town.

Colonel Crockett's horse had become lame on the journey. He obtained
another, and, with his feet nearly touching the ground as he bestrode
the little animal, the party resumed its long and weary journey,
directing their course two or three hundred miles farther southwest
through the very heart of Texas to San Antonio. They frequently
encountered vast expanses of canebrakes; such canes as Northern boys
use for fishing-poles. There is one on the banks of Caney Creek,
seventy miles in length, with scarcely a tree to be seen for the whole
distance. There was generally a trail cut through these, barely wide
enough for a single mustang to pass. The reeds were twenty or thirty
feet high, and so slender that, having no support over the path, they
drooped a little inward and intermingled their tops. Thus a very
singular and beautiful canopy was formed, beneath which the travellers
moved along sheltered from the rays of a Texan sun.

As they were emerging from one of these arched avenues, they saw three
black wolves jogging along very leisurely in front of them, but at too
great a distance to be reached by a rifle-bullet. Wild turkeys were
very abundant, and vast droves of wild horses were cropping the herbage
of the most beautiful and richest pastures to be found on earth.
Immense herds of buffaloes were also seen.

"These sights," says Crockett, "awakened the ruling passion strong
within me, and I longed to have a hunt on a large scale. For though I
had killed many bears and deer in my time, I had never brought down a
buffalo, and so I told my friends. But they tried to dissuade me from
it, telling me that I would certainly lose my way, and perhaps perish;
for though it appeared a garden to the eye, it was still a wilderness.
I said little more upon the subject until we crossed the Trinidad
River. But every mile we travelled, I found the temptation grew
stronger and stronger."

The night after crossing the Trinidad River they were so fortunate as
to come across the hut of a poor woman, where