St. Louis' Isle, Or Texiana: With Additional Observations Made in the United States and in Canada

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Simmonds & Ward, 1847 - Canada - 204 pages

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Page 14 - ... security of their coming crops ; a system which keeps them long out of their money, and occasionally leads to losses of no inconsiderable extent. Accommodation of this description is also almost universally afforded by the shipping merchants of the southern slave-holding states to the cotton growers of that country ; a course which, in many instances, has pledged the latter two or three crops deep, and materially assisted, in conjunction with an atrociously bad banking system, to produce that...
Page 204 - Beyond this flood a frozen continent Lies, dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail ; which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile ; all else deep snow and ice...
Page 36 - " Then shoot !" replied Me Allister, throwing off his blanket and exposing his manly breast, "and the quicker the better!" Salezar took him at his word, and a single ball sent as brave a man as ever trod the earth to eternity ! His ears were then cut off, his shirt and pantaloons stripped from him, and his body thrown by the roadside as food for wolves...
Page 21 - ... inches, is ground into the small segment of a circle and rendered sharp; thus leaving an apparent curve of the knife, although in reality the upturned point is not higher than the line of the back. The back itself gradually increases in weight of metal as it approaches the hilt, on which a small guard is placed.
Page 15 - Texas generally may with safety be regarded as a place of refuge for rascality and criminality of all kinds — the sanctuary to which pirates, murderers, thieves, and swindlers fly for protection from the laws they have violated in other countries, and under other governments. It has...
Page 6 - Galveston itself. Sprinkled with wrecks of various appearances and sizes — all alike gloomy, however, in their looks and associations — it strikes the heart of a stranger as a sort of ocean-cemetery, a sea churchyard, in which broken masts and shattered timbers, half-buried in quicksands, seem to remain above the surface of the treacherous waters only to remind the living, like dead camels on a level desert, of the destruction that has gone before, and yet awaits many who may come after. It may...
Page 7 - About noon, on the 29th of March, we landed in reality. From the sea, the appearance of Galveston is that of a fine city of great extent, built close upon the edge of the water ; but its glory vanishes gradually in proportion to the nearness of approach of the spectator, until on his arrival at the end of one of the long, rude, wood projections, called wharfs, which shoot out some quarter of a mile into the shallows of the bay, he finds nothing but a poor straggling collection of weatherboarded frame-houses,...
Page 13 - ... imported ; and as the storekeepers generally calculate upon a profit of one hundred per cent, on the great majority of the goods in which they deal, it may readily be inferred how rapidly the little money there is in the place becomes transferred from the pockets of the people at large to the purses of the storekeepers. The latter have a practice amongst them of supplying the planters of the interior with a year's outfit of all kinds of necessaries upon the pledge and security of their coming...
Page 169 - A flat-boat is nothing more than a quadrangular floating box—a wooden dripping-tin,—a capacious washing tub, composed of roughsawn planks, and provided with a rude kind of cabin, made sufficiently water-tight to enable it to float down the current to its destination, and no more. Numbers of this description of craft are moored so closely together by the river-side, that one may run along the floor formed by their flat-covered tops with equal facility as upon the deck of a ship. The owners of...
Page 162 - The Crescent City," a vast forest extends on either side, as far as the eye can reach ; opened here and there by the axe of the settler, and enlivened by happy-looking rustic homesteads, or the more extensive village-like establishments of the planter. Though past the middle of December when I arrived, the negroes were at work cutting the sugar-cane — that tall and beautiful plant, whose height made themselves and their cattle appear dwindled to the size of Shetland ponies. About the houses, rows...

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