XIV.
THE FINISH.
Coach, not Couch.—A new Tread-mill.—Rascality of a Sub-treasurer.—The same Country, but another Driver.—Live-oak versus Mesquite.—A sandy Desert as large as Massachusetts.—Not a complete Desert.—A dirty, but hospitable Rancho.—Thousands of Cattle on no Hill.—A forty-mile Fence.—A Patch of four hundred square Miles.—Mr. King's Rancho and Pluck.—Perils.—Mr. Murdock's Murder.—Corpus Christi.—Indianola.—Good-bye.
It was a coach, and not a couch, that awaited me. Neither beefsteak nor bed, on each of which I was so much doting, did I see or feel or taste in Brownsville. Reaching the hotel, I find a few servants just opening and sweeping its hall; for the time of breakfast is not yet. Inquiring as to the best means of reaching Galveston, I learn that no steamer is due for a day or two, and it will be several days before she leaves. A stage is to leave for Corpus Christi in a few moments. It will reach there to-morrow night. Thence I can catch a mail-boat for Indianola, perhaps a steamer, and so swing round to Galveston.
It seems strange that one on a stage-coach for three weeks should crave it again so soon. But Holmes describes a tread-mill prisoner who was so pleased with his punishment that he determined, at his release, to "have a round or two for fun," and, after he had got home, to set up "a tread-mill of his own." I have no expectation of going into the stage business myself; but I did feel so glad at escaping from that three weeks' imprisonment in a tossing, racking, galloping prison, that I felt willing to add nearly two hundred miles more to it, and not hesitatingly mounted the coach of rest.
Two things helped forward this feeling—a dislike of the sea, and
