Or sandy hollow in the fir-crowned hill,
The atoms eloquent admonish still;
Even the humblest hour-glass has the pow'r,
To tell Christ's lesson while it tells the hour!

YOUNG TEXAS.

NOT many Englishwomen include Texas in
their travels up and down the world. It may
be a question with some whether a rough Texan
is not a creature like a mouse or a mad bull at
which it is good to scream. I don't know. I
have been an Englishwoman among the Texans,
and saw little to scream at. I am not sure
whether there are not heroic elements in their
primitive rough-and-ready way of life.

A soldier of a Texan regiment strolled beyond
the lines, in Tennessee. A Federal picket
espied him, pointed his musket, and cried,
"Surrender!" "Well, I suppose I must, seeing I am
without arms," replied the Texan. And he
dropped passively into step with his captor, who,
in his turn, "dropped" his musket, and proceeded
to march into camp with his prisoner. The
Texan ranger was "without arms," it is true,
for a bit of rope in his hand was either
unobserved or unregarded, till it was thrown as a
lasso round the Yankee, and his arms—arms as
to the flesh and fire-arms—were bound closely
to his side. "I reckon you had better surrender
to me now," said the Texan.

There was no help for it. A Texan with
his hunter's wit and a handful of rope might
pinion Achilles himself, I believe. "Roping" a
kitten or an unlucky hen with a few yards of
thick cord, had been the fun of his childhood; to
rope beef and wild horses, had been the ambition
of his boyhood. Just as a young English boy
measures his height against the full-sized cricket-
bat of his elder brother, so does the boy of Texas
aspire to the "cabros" and the "lariat," two
kinds of lasso, in the use of which the Texan
vies with his accomplished neighbours the
Mexicans. The cabros is made of a thick rope
of horsehair, the lariat of strips of raw hide
plaited. A third kind of lasso, requiring no
kind of preparation, is the long pliant stem of a
wonderful "vine," in fact a leguminous plant,
which, from a single root, sometimes spreads
over an acre of ground on the sandy shores of
Texas and Florida, where it is used as a
substitute for rope. It produces a large bean two
inches across, which has a dark, hard polished
skin or shell, that, when scooped out, may be
formed into a little heart-shaped box or bottle.

I knew the young son of a Texan general, who
may be accepted as a fair sample of the upper-
ten-dom of his native state. On first acquaintance,
this quiet, diffident, and daintily-dressed
youth seemed to have been built and bred for
the drawing-room only. Yet there seemed to be
a touch of Munchausen himself in the domestic
adventures which he would incidentally mention,
without boast, as matters of nearly every-day
occurrence. And when setting off to join his
regiment in Mississippi, he decided to leave his
favourite chargers at home, because, said the
youth, "I prefer a young mustang fresh from,
the prairies. I will buy one and tame it myself,
and teach it to do what I please, without having
its wild spirit subdued." He would bring an
unbroken horse into training in the course of a
few hours' ride. "Training" enough for him,
who had learned to ride as soon as he could
walk, and had trained his own horses from the
day he had first caught them with his lasso.

Perhaps no other of the American States
furnishes so much variety as the "Young
Giant," named first among the Indians, Texas,
which is, by interpretation, "Plenty." In its
towns may be met with every shade of
character; the savage Indian, the hardy pioneer,
the educated gentleman. There are Mexicans,
Indians, negroes, half-breeds, outlawed ruffians,
industrious emigrants from all countries, with
native Americans, some showing northern
energy, and some showing the luxuriousness of
the south. In climate almost tropical along
the Gulf and the Mexican frontier, the severity
of northern winters sweeps over the high Texan
table-lands to the north-west. Its people are
naturally warlike. They had scarcely cooled
down from their war of independence in
'thirty-six, before their spirit was stirred by the
annexation of their republic to the United
States in 'forty-five, an event attributed to the
influence of the influx of settlers from the north,
which still is a sore subject to the native Texan.
Born upon battle-grounds, imbibing the spirit
of war with their mother's milk, and nursed in
every skill and craft for self-protection against
Indians, against open white enemies, and against
wild beasts; self-reliant and vigilant in their
solitary homes; the genuine Texans are the best
of soldiers, with eyes all round their heads, and
the ears of an Indian.

That is something of a country into which
you take a rural walk subject to adventures with
wolves, bears, panthers, colloquially "painters,"
leopard-cats, deer, buffaloes, foxes, peccaries,
wild hogs, wild horses or mustangs, wild cats,
racoons, and opossums; to say nothing of rattle-
snakes, and the host of less dangerous, though
still mischievous creatures, among which they
live. No wonder that the Texan country gentleman
and his sons consider it etiquette to decorate
themselves with bowie-knife and revolver. The
young gentleman before mentioned was at home
in Texas. How did he amuse himself with his
own country sports? First with the lasso.
Thus he tells of the killing of a "beef," or wild
bull, on the prairies.

"When we have picked out the beef we wish
to kill, aud have so chased him away from the herd
as not to alarm the rest, I ' rope' him. This
can be done either round the horns, or the legs,
to throw him in a convenient position. When
down, I seize his tail, get it between his legs,
and hold it tightly strained over the uppermost
haunch, sitting upon him to get a good hold,
and to keep the limb bound firmly while somebody
shoots or stabs him. That is all. It is
only a few minutes' work. I have merely to