I hope to live to see them a great nation, and, at all
events, it is worth a trial."

My friend shook his head mournfully; he was not convinced, but he knew
the bent of my temper, and was well aware that all he could say would
now be useless.

The natural buoyancy of our spirits would not, however, allow us to be
grave long; and when the loud shouts of the doctor announced that he had
caught a sight of the river, we spurred our horses, and soon rejoined
our company. We had by this time issued from the swampy canebrakes, and
were entering a lane between two rich cotton-fields, and at the end of
which flowed the Red River; not the beautiful, clear, and transparent
stream running upon a rocky and sandy bed, as in the country inhabited
by the Comanches and Pawnee Picts, and there termed the Colorado of the
West; but a red and muddy, yet rapid stream. We agreed that we should
not ferry the river that evening, but seek a farm, and have a feast
before parting company. We learned from a negro, that we were in a place
called Lost Prairie, and that ten minutes' ride down the bank of the
stream would carry us to Captain Finn's plantation. We received this
news with wild glee, for Finn was a celebrated character, one whose life
was so full of strange adventures in the wilderness, that it would fill
volumes with hair-breadth encounters and events of thrilling interest.

Captain Finn received us with a cordial welcome, for unbounded
hospitality is the invariable characteristic of the older cotton
planters. A great traveller himself, he knew the necessities of a
travelling life, and, before conducting us to the mansion, he guided us
to the stables, where eight intelligent slaves, taking our horses,
rubbed them down before our eyes, and gave them a plentiful supply of
fodder and a bed of fresh straw.

"That will do till they are cool," said our kind host; "to-night they
will have their grain and water; let us now go to the old woman and see
what she can give us for supper."

A circumstance worthy of remark is, that, in the western states, a
husband always calls his wife the old woman, and she calls him the old
man, no matter how young the couple may be. I have often heard men of
twenty-five sending their slaves upon some errand "to the old woman,"
who was not probably more than eighteen years old. A boy of ten years
calls his parents in the same way. "How far to Little Rock?" I once
asked of a little urchin; "I don't know," answe