The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas by Frederick Marryat

From Batesville to the southern Missouri border, the road continues for a hundred miles through a dreary solitude of rocky mountains and pine forests, full of snakes and a variety of game, but without the smallest vestige of civilization. There is not a single blade of grass to be found, except in the hollows, and these are too swampy for a horse to venture upon. Happily, small clear and limpid brooks are passed every half-hour, and I had had the precaution to provide myself, at a farm, with a large bag of maize for my horse. After all, we fared better than we should have done at the log huts, and my faithful steed, at all events, escaped the "ring. " What the "ring" is, I will explain to the reader.

In these countries, it always requires a whole day's smart riding to go from one farm to another; and when the traveller is a "raw trotter" or a "green one" (Arkansas denomination for a stranger), the host employs all his cunning to ascertain if his guest has any money, as, if so, his object is to detain him as long as he can. To gain this information, although there are always at home half-a-dozen strong boys to take the horses, he sends a pretty girl (a daughter, or a niece) to show you the stable and the maize-store. This nymph becomes the traveller's attendant; she shows him the garden and the pigs, and the stranger's bedroom, &c. The consequence is, that the traveller becomes gallant, the girl insists upon washing his handkerchief and mending his jacket before he starts the next morning, and by keeping constantly with him, and continual conversation, she is, generally speaking, able to find out whether the traveller has money or not, and reports accordingly.