abrogoines' had their skins generally too full of the happifying water of life, to feel, other than an agreeable tickle, the nozzling of the probos. cis of musquetoe; and had moccasin bitten them, it is a question, if the serpent had not been poisoned, instead of the bitten.

Many a load of whiskey and flour, and many a box of piece goods had disappeared in this swamp, through which ran the Cash; and if fame be not egregiously a liar, many a boatman's body was disposed of, uncoffined, and in a nameless sepulchre; and here, no doubt, were deposited the avails of Dorfeuille's bunch of keys. Here bandit scenes transpired, which only needed Schiller's painting, to have been as famous, as those of Venice, or Germany. In a few months Pluggy's renown rivalled that of her husband. Her height, fierceness and rough chin, and a kind of long moss at the corners of her upper lip, not unlike mustachios, often raised bantering questioning among the banditti, in their cups, when the leader was absent, if he had not really taken a man, instead of a lady, to the partnership of his abode. In fact, it had become a joke among them to affirm that Pluggy was a man in the dress of a squaw. In due time a little wailer Plug raised a lusty cry in the woods, being, that the poor thing had not taken a musquetoe dose, and its skin had not yet acquired the habit of being bitten. Dr. Mitchell and others had not yet raised nice physiological distinctions; and this little one, in the rough cast reasonings of the gang, was deemed proof conclusive in regard to the sex.

Their only domestic broil of public notoriety occurred some years afterwards. An intercourse, not altogether platonic, was suspected to be in progress between Pluggy and the second in command. The courage of the commander had waxed, by this time, to the sticking point. He called the lieutenant, known by the Sobriquet 'Nine-eyes' to the field, or rather swamp of honor. 'Dern your soul,' said he, do you think this sort of candlestick-ammer (meaning, perhaps, clandestine amour) will pass?' 'If you do, by gosh, I will put it to you, or you shall to me.' They measured their ground, like two heroes, and there was no mistake in the affair, which was settled by rifles. Each carried in his flesh a round piece of lead, as a keep sake of the courage and close shooting of the other. Each became cool and even affectionate, admitting honorable satisfaction. 'You are grit,' said he of Rockingham to Nine-eyes. The other swore 'that his captain had deported, like a real Kentuck.' A little curly headed Plug attended, as a kind of bottle holder. He was directed to place a bottle of whiskey mid way between them. Each limped, pari passu, to the tune, one, two, three, &c. to the bottle. Over it they drank, embraced, and attested each other's honor. They must lie by in dry dock awhile; but they comforted cach other, that they were too well up to these things to be fazed by a little cold lead. It was understood, too, that Nine-eyes had been platonic and Pluggy immaculate; and the historian averreth, that he is of undoubting opinion, that no duel hath been more reciprocally creditable to the parties from that time to this. How many boats they robbed, how many murders committed, or abetted, it were bootless to think of compressing into our limits. The country had begun to settle. An officer, named a Sheriff, began to perambulate the country armed to the teeth, and bearing the sword not in vain. Boats, that stoppcd near Cash were manned, and aimed for resistance. Plug discerning

the signs of the times, drew in his horns, mended the exterior of his manners, and saw the necessity of achieving by craft, what he had formerly carried, coup de main. The greatest success of the gang was in the line of gambling; and their main resource in piloting boats into dangerous places, and in general, acting the part of boat-wreckers and moon-cursers. An occasional boat, feebly manned, sometimes fell into their power in a dark and stormy night. It went up the Cash; and in the morning neither plank, nor vestige nor crew was to be found.

Ajax, Achilles and Napoleon had their reverses, and so had Plug. A Kentucky boat had experienced some indignity, and was prepared for revenge, the next autumn. Five or six persons, well armed, landed above, and kept in sight of the boat, as they descended the woods in flank with it. Their hands rowed the boat ashore at the mouth of Cash, where Plug and four associates were waiting, like spiders in ambush for flies. It was a sultry September afternoon, and the weather betokened an evening of storm and thunder. They were courteously invited to land; and were piloted up the Cash for the security of a harbor from the tempest. The three Kentuckians affected simplicity, and proposed a game of cards under the cotton wood shade. They were scarcely seated, and their money brought forth, before Plug whistled the signal of onset. But he reckoned this time without his host. The concealed reserve sprang to the aid of their friends, and the contest was soon decided. Three of Plug's company were thrown into the river, and at least one was drowned. All evaporated from their captain, as June clouds vanish before the sun. Poor Col. Plug resisted to no purpose. They stripped him to his birth-day suit, and thonged him so, that his arms, per force, embraced a sapling of the size of his body; and, for the rest, they fixed him as immovably, as he had been in the stocks. As his epidermis was toughish, and parchment-like, they faithfully laid on the cowhide to mollify the leather of his back, to facilitate the operations of the musquetoes. These little musicians, by a spirit of concert, the secret of which is best known to themselves, issued forth, to the number of at least half a million, each emulous of reposing on some part of his flesh, and tasting his lymphatics. Not an arable spot of his body, of the size of a musquetoe, but bore one; and the industrious little leeches often carried double, and even triple, in the contest for precedence in experimenting his composition. As soon as one sped away with his sack sufficiently red, and distended, a hundred waited for his place. Plug chewed the cud of fancies altogether bitter, and wished himself lapping cream in his native scullery. He derned, and grunted, but could not move a muscle sufficiently to interrupt a single blood letter in his operations. They heeded his curses and writhings as little, as a sleeping parishioner in hay time docs the fiery fifteenth" denunciation of his parson.

Poor Pluggy in her lone bower knew, by the failure of the return party, that there was reason to snuff bad omens some where in the gale. She set forth to seek her beloved; one of the young Plugs in breeches and another in petticoats following her steps. She trailed the party; and in half an hour came upon the vanquished one, running the christian race, stedfast and immovable. He embraced the tree, as in the most vehement affection, with his face towards it; and his naked body was one surface of musque

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toes. She soon decyphered his position. But instead of incontinently cutting him loose, she clasped her hands theatrically, crying out, Yasu Chree! O mio carissimo sposo, what for, like one dem fool, you hug de tree, and let the marengoes suck up all your sweet brud! If Plug cursed her unadvisedly, let it be urged in extenuation, that his spirit was stirred in him, and any thing rather than complacent. Be that determined as it may, he cursed her most unconnubially, and bade her 'not to let on' any of her jaw, until she had cut him loose.

Plug begat him sons and daughters, and was in a fair way to have defrauded the gallows, and to die peacably in his bower. But he was caught, eventually in a trap of his own springing. A boat had landed not far above Cash; and the crew were in the woods to shoot turkeys. A Mississippi squall was coming on. To equalize the danger, Plug was in the vacant boat, digging out the caulking at the bottom. While he was yet in the act, and the crew were running from the woods to get on board, the gale struck the boat from the shore, broke the fast, and drove it into the stream, with only Plug on board. The waves from above, lashed to fury, and the leak from below filled the boat, and it sunk. Plug had disengaged a barrel of whiskey, and took to this favourite resource, to enable him to gain the shore. But it rolled him off on one side, and then on the other. Plug drank water instead of whiskey, which he would have preferred. His sins came up in terrible array, and his heart beat quick and pantingly. In short, he found a watery grave. Thus fell the last of the boat wreckers.

Is it expedient for the United States to obtain possession of Texas?

As a matter of opinion, we have the misfortune to differ from most of our friends in having, from our first acquaintance with the Western country, uniformly felt the conviction, that Texas belonged of right and expediency to our republic. 1. By original purchase. 2dly. By configuration, being in that respect, physically, a part of the Mississippi valley. (Vide part 1. Geography and History of the Western States.) 3dly. By being the proper escape valve from the danger of too great an accumulation of blacks in the slave states, dividing, and diminishing the gangs, and thinning the population, by diffusing it over greater surfaces, being the natural progress towards universal emancipation. 4thly. By its being a valuable addition to our cotton and sugar raising districts. 5thly. By the salubrity of the climate of the interior, furnishing a desirable domestic resort for invalids from the effects of northern climates. 6thly. By its being indispensable to our domestic resources, for procuring within ourselves the mules necessary for the southern planters. 7thly. By its be⚫ing, probably, the only country in North America, where raising the best breeds of sheep, for their wool, will be found profitable and congenial with the soil, climate and circumstances of the country. 8thly. From its inexhaustible mineral supplies, it furnishing silver, platina and mercury, minerals not known to abound in any part of our present territory, and

which are important requisites to our resources. 9thly. By its being at present a nucleus for vagabonds from the United States, who assail our frontiers with impunity, while they take refuge from justice in it, as a foreign territory. 10thly. From its possessing a coast and a frontier, through which negro slaves have been, and while a foreign territory, will be, extensively smuggled into our country. 11thly. From the value and importance of the harbors, and its extent of sea coast along the Gulph of Mexico.

Upon each of these topics, we have no doubt, that we could raise a long dissertation, which, if it had no other effect, would discipline the patience of our readers. We are amused with the sapient strictures upon our views of the country by travellers, who have traversed it in pursuit of mules, or traffic; and who measure every thing, and fix a general standard by a belt of the country, five miles in width, which their own eyes have surveyed. It is very easy to be positive and ignorant. Many people possess the endowments from nature. To form general views from comparison of innumerable particulars, to fix enlarged and philosophic estimates, and to settle the common features and characteristics of a great division of country is the capability of but very few; and as far as our knowledge extends, of not a single traveller in that country, with whose works we are acquainted.

As a sample of the style of Texas travellers, we refer the reader to an article, which appeared in the Gazette of this city, which swept away; with the ipse dixit besom of the said traveller, all, but his own writing, which had yet appeared on the subject of Texas, and restrained sweeping farther only from extreme delicacy. We could make nothing of any part of the transcendent information, which he imparted, instead of the annihilated labors of his predecessors, except, that somewhere in his article, he assured us, that the end of all things was so near at hand, that the acquisition of Texas was a matter of little comparative importance. Such sapient seers are certainly most excellently fitted to be philosophic travellers. Pity, he had not been more definite, in giving us day and hour. It would, no doubt, have very much affected mortgages, and titles to real es▾ tate!!

We have not personally explored the country. But we have lived many years near the western limits of Louisiana. We have been far up the Arkansas, and in contiguous regions. We have received personal information from at least one hundred travellers in the country, two of whom have explored it farther and in more various directions, than any traveller who has favored the public with printed views of it. From these premises, we have formed an undoubting impression for ourselves, and our readers may make the most of it, that Texas does not contain any great amount of live oak, any charges of inaccuracy, in so saying in the Geography and History of the Western States, to the contrary notwithstanding. We believe, that the greater divisions of the country are mostly prairie, or bushy barrens, covered with Musquetoe wood, and other thorny shrubs; and that it has wide districts covered with the prickly pear, cactus ferox, &c. We believe, that the north western divisions of the country are least fertile, and abound in silver, and the accompanying metals, as much as any portion of Mexico.

We believe, that its prairies are covered with a

short, sweet grass, far more agreeable and salutary to mules, sheep and cattle, than that of the prairies of our western country. We believe, that it has a climate subject to atmospheric phenomena, and changes of weather, as regards temperature and rain, widely different from any portion of our country, except belts contiguous to Texas. We believe, that the inte rior, from St. Antonio to the mountains, has a drier atmosphere, and a climate more salubrious, and conducive to longevity, than any portion of the United States. We believe that far less rain falls in the interior, than in any given division of the same extent in our country. We believe, that portions of the alluvial and maritime country are as fertile as any part of the world, but that, on the whole, the country is not susceptible of a dense population over its surface generally; that it is not calculated to be, or ever will be, a country densely peopled with slaves; but that it much more strongly invites shepherds and miners; that it is a country peculiarly fitted to the habits, predilections, and necessities of the people of the southern and western states. Such are some of the articles of our creed, in respect to Texas. We have interrogated and sifted much to obtain them; for the dry air and sunny climate are circumstances, upon which an invalid, much dependent for comfort upon atmospheric accidents, will naturally cast a wistful look, from wintry inclemency and ever changing aspects of the sky. We give these views only as matter of our opinions.

The purport of this discussion is specifically to meet, and obviate, if we may, two objections to the acquisition of Texas. 1. That it will weaken our republic, too unwieldy already, by an additional extension of territory and consequent increase of debility. 2. That it will give an undue ascendency to the southern states, and perpetuate slavery.

Our opinion is adverse to both these positions, and we shall state our reasons, why they are so.

I. Our territory is too unwieldy and extensive already.

The American people have inhaled from their birth, and have cherished such an instinctive love of liberty, the liberty of pursuing their own enjoyments in their own way, that when they imagine they can secure the objects of their pursuit better in one country, than another, no matter whether in Canada or Mexico, there they conceive, they have a right to emigrate, and there, so long as they are free, they will be found. If their country should become a step-mother to them, in attempting to deprive them of this charter of range, and to insist upon their belonging to her soil, they would no longer love her, as the nurse and protectress of their freedom. The government can only retain citizens within its own domain, by offering in that cope a greater show of these objects of pursuit, than can be furnished elsewhere. If Texas show tempting aspects, in regard to any of his real or imaginary wants, will a parallel of latitude, a star of a constellation, or an invisible line keep the wanderer from the point, where his imagination and his wishes have already emigrated? It will be objected, that these rovers have no patriotism, or they would never have left the maternal jurisdiction of the stars and stripes. We altogether deny the fact. There are in the Canadas, in Texas, and in other countries, citizens, who, by leaving the United States, instead of relinquishing a particle of affection, or honor, or pride, or patriotism in relation to the mother country, have found them all concentrated on a foreign soil. Ask VOL. II-No. 7.

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