shingles in his roof, and spaces between the
boarding of his cabin through which an arm
might be thrust out. Another of these land-
owners—living entirely on fried pork—was
asked, whether there was no game in his
neighbourhood? Yes, there were birds, and
there was venison; but it was too much trouble
to go out after them; "when he wanted
fresh," he said, " it was easier to go out and
stick a hog."

The negroes having no personal interest in
their work, seldom work with a will, and
wherever there is slave-labour there are
masters steeped in indolence.

Among the American settlers in Texas you
find even the wealthiest owners of plantations
living in rooms without civilised ornament,—
with doors that have no latches or handles,
and that, when shut, must be opened like
oysters—with a knife—dispensing with glass
for their windows, or content with three
whole panes in every eight, living upon fried
pork and beef, rude cakes of bread and coffee,
even in farms abounding with Welch cows
often wholly destitute of milk because of the
trouble of milking, and never having butter
fit to eat, because of the trouble of doing
work with proper cleanliness. At the
principal hotel of the capital of Texas, our travellers
were reduced to the necessity of camping
in a private room, buying their food and
cooking it themselves.

Through such miseries in Eastern Texas,
Mr. Olmsted and his companions came to
New Braunfels. The inn they entered at
once carried their thoughts far away to the
Rhine land. They supped in a room having
pink walls, with stencilled panels and scroll
ornaments in crimson, neatly framed prints
hanging on all sides. There was a well-
finished oak-table, the oak chairs were
chiselled, and there was a sofa covered with a
neat looking pink calico. For dinner there
was spread the finest, clean, white cloth seen
in Texas, and there was produced an excellent
soup, followed by two courses of meat,
"neither of them pork, and neither of them
fried, two dishes of vegetables, salad, compote
of peaches, coffee with milk, wheat bread
from the loaf, and beautiful, sweet butter—
not only," Mr. Olmsted adds, "such butter as
I have never tasted south of the Potomac
before, but such as I have been told a
hundred times, it was impossible to make in
a southern climate. What is the secret? I
suppose it is extreme cleanliness, beginning
far back of where cleanliness usually begins
at the south, and careful, thorough working."
For the first time in Texas the horses of the
travellers had their legs rubbed and pushed
their noses into racks filled with fine
mesquit-hay. For the first time the travellers
enjoyed in Texas the luxury of having each a
whole bed to himself, and a bed dainty and
clean in a next room with painted walls and
with glass windows sound in every pane, over
which were trained on the outside evergreen
roses. The bed-room contained a sofa, a
bureau, books, a statuette in porcelain, plants
in pots, a brass study-lamp, a large ewer
and basin for washing, and a couple of
towels of thick stuff, full a yard and a quarter
long.

Out of doors part-singing was to be heard
in the cottages, a tame doe was at home in
the street, and when the travellers went out
of the town next morning they met cheerful
troops of little children clean and neatly
dressed, carrying satchels and knapsacks of
books, and small kettles of dinner.

That was the traveller's first impression of
New Braunfels. Another and a longer visit,
with some little experience of home-life
among German colonists in the surrounding
district, made the impression deeper, but
effaced no part of it. The people of New
Braunfels have little capital. Half the men
now residing in small weather-tight
cottages, with verandahs or galleries and well-
glazed casements, are men who themselves
follow the plough. The waggon-makers of the
town are in repute throughout Texas, and
there are seven waggon manufactories, as
well as four grist-mills. The town contains
a fair proportion of mechanics, carpenters,
blacksmiths, locksmiths, coppersmiths,
tinsmiths, turners, tailors, tanners, shoemakers,
&c. ''I do not think," says Mr. Olmsted,
"that there is another town in the slave
states in which the proportion to the whole
population of mechanics, or of persons
employed in the exercise of their own
discretion in productive occupations, is one-
quarter as large as in New Braunfels, unless
it be some other in which the Germans are
the predominating race." There is a good
newspaper in the town, edited by the
naturalist, Lindheimer; there is an agricultural
society, a mechanics' institute, an harmonic
society, and a society for political debates, in
which men may speak out with the Atlantic
put between themselves, and the not always
very faithful masters of their Fatherland.
They grow some cotton on their little plots,
and send into the market eight hundred bales
a-year produced by the free labour of white
men from Europe.

Fifteen miles from any village lived a
German settler, with his wife and son, and a
single man, a friend who came out with
them. They began by hiring themselves out
as farm-labourers to their countrymen at New
Braunfels, worked hard, and at last throve.
They miss the social comforts they have left.

"It is hard for a young man," said the
single emigrant; "he can have so little
pleasure. These American gentlemen, here
in Texas, they do not know any pleasure.
When they come together sometimes, what
do they? They can only sit all round the
fire and speet! Why, then they drink some
whiskey; or may be they play cards, or
they make great row. They have no pleasure
as in Germany."