made me known to all the speculators that visited New-Orleans, and gave me the name of every fellow who would speculate that lived on the Mississippi river, and many of its tributary streams, from NewOrleans up to all the large western cities.

I had become acquainted with a Kentuckian, who boarded at the same tavern I did, and I suspected he had a large sum of money; I felt an inclination to count it for him before I left the city; so I made my notions known to Phelps and my other new comrades, and concerted our plan. I was to get him off to the swamp with me on a spree, and when we were returning to our lodgings, my friends were to meet us and rob us both. I had got very intimate with the Kentuckian, and he thought me one of the best fellows in the world. He was very fond of wine; and I had him well fumed with good wine before I made the proposition for a frolic. When I invited him to walk with me he readily accepted the invitation. We cut a few shines with the girls, and started to the tavern. We were met by a band of robbers, and robbed of all our money. The Kentuckian was so mad that he cursed the whole city, and wished that it would all be deluged in a flood of water so soon as he left the place. I went to my friends the next morning, and got my share of the spoil money, and my pocketbook that I had been robbed of. We got seven hundred and five dollars of the bold Kentuckian, which was divided among thirteen of us.

"I commenced travelling and making all the acquaintances among the speculators that I could. I went from New-Orleans to Cincinnati, and from there I vis

ited Lexington, in Kentucky. I found a speculator about four miles from Newport, who furnished me with a fine horse the second night after I arrived at his house. I went from Lexington to Richmond, in Virginia, and from there I visited Charleston, in the State of South Carolina: and from thence to Milledgeville, by the way of Savannah and Augusta, in the State of Georgia. I made my way from Milledgeville to Williamson county, the old stamping-ground. In all the route I only robbed eleven men; but I preached some fine sermons, and scattered some counterfeit United States paper among my brethren.")

The day was now far spent, the shadows of gathering twilight had already begun to mantle the face of nature, and Murrell had not concluded the history of his life. He proposed to discontinue it for the present, promising to resume it at such time during their journey when a better opportunity and greater leisure would enable him to enter more into particulars. Their progress had been considerably delayed by the high waters of the Mississippi, which had rendered Murrell's trace through the valley impassable; who at length suggested to Hues that it would be better to leave the trace, and by directing their course higher up they would strike the river at the foot of the Chickasaw Bluff, above the plantation of a Mr. Shelby, and continue down the bank of the river till they should reach the private crossing-place of the clan. They did so; and as they were passing Mr. S.'s plantation, and while yet in sight of his dwelling, Murrell attempted a display of his tact in producing disaffection with a number of Mr. S.'s negroes, who were at work on the

bank of the river. The spirit of disloyalty and rebellion was soon perceptible, and in a short time became almost violent; finding vent, first in murmurs of discontent, and afterward in audible execrations and expressions of hatred against their master. He soon obtained from them the promise to accompany him to a free state at any time when he should call for them.

When they had progressed about four miles below Mr. Shelby's, they found their way very much embarrassed by the recent overflow; and, after many unsuccessful attempts to proceed, they determined to take lodgings for the night of the 28th at the house of a Mr. John Champion, who resided on the river, and await the return of day to encounter farther the difficulties of their journey. They had not been long in company with Mr. Champion before Murrell, or Merrill, as he now called himself, began to sound him on the subject of speculation, as he chooses to term the pursuits of his fiendish brotherhood; nor, had he omitted an initial, would it have been a misnomer-except, indeed, it might have fallen short of conveying an adequate idea of their deep-toned horror and infamy. Hues found himself now obliged to listen to a recapitulation of the same feats of villany and crime that had constituted so important a part of Murrell's conversation with him since the morning of their first acquaintance on the Estanaula turnpike. Mr. Champion, however, discovered but little of the fondness for such topics which Hues had pretended; nor did he become so suddenly enamoured of the character, or dazzled by the brilliant achievements, of the distinguished elder brother of Madison county, as Murrell's ima

gination had led him to believe was his young fellowtraveller. During this conversation, Hues had by no means been idle or inattentive; he had marked well the countenance of Mr. Champion, noted with scrutinizing gaze every variation of feature that might indicate the operations of his mind, and caught with devouring avidity every word that fell from his lips. For he saw before him a task to be performed of the highest importance to his future movements, and upon which, as he thought, the fate of his undertaking in no small degree depended. IIe foresaw the great necessity of learning the character of Mr. Champion, whom he now beheld for the first time, and of making him a friend and confidant: for the time was now near at hand when, according to a prior arrangement, he was to accompany Murrell alone beyond the Mississippi, among the gloomy haunts of a lawless banditti, whose characters he had already heard painted in the blackest colours; and where, as yet, he had no sufficient assurance that he would not be immolated upon the same altar that had already been ensanguined by the blood of many others. His object in making the friendship of Mr. Champion was to leave behind him some data, which, in the event of his murder, might lead to the detection of the assassin, and furnish to the world some idea of the circumstances of his death. It was not long before Hues saw, or thought he saw, in Mr. Champion, the very individual he so much desired, and whose services and confidence he deemed of so great importance in the hazardous and almost hopeless adventure upon which he was about to enter. Notwithstanding this fortunate discovery, how

ever, and although he had expressed to Murrell his willingness to accompany him to Arkansas, Hues had not yet obtained the entire consent of his own mind thus to jeopard his life and risk the failure of his plans upon so uncertain a tenure as the assurance of an individual who had already confessed himself capable of the blackest and most unprincipled falsehoods; and whose whole history, so far as related, appeared but a continued series of the basest deceptions, and the darkest deeds of villany and crime. He knew not but all Murrell's fair, and apparently disinterested promises, were so many toils to insnare the more easily his unwary steps; and painted in the alluring and seductive colours of friendship and confidence, the more readily to practise upon his credulity. He found great difficulty, therefore, in bringing himself at length to the belief of what he had heard. Without some such conviction, it had never been his intention to enter the morass. The merely contingent hope of finding there Mr. Henning's negroes, still less the more doubtful prospect, in such an event, of being able, by his own unaided efforts, to capture and reclaim them, had comparatively little weight in shaping his determinations; his object was 'purer, higher, nobler." Filled with just and patriotic indignation against these common and insidious (the more fearful because insidious) enemies of his country and his race; and viewing, as he did, the thickening clouds that hung in unseen but threatening terror over the defenceless heads of the fairer part of creation, charged with death, ravishment, and prostitution, in all their hideous, torturing, and humiliating forms; and the ten thousand

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