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Updated: June 23, 2025
During the year 1847, whilst but a boy, and residing on the sea-beach some three or four miles from the city of Galveston, Judge Wheeler, at that time Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, paid us a visit, and brought with him a gentleman, whom he had known several years previously on the Sabine River, in the eastern part of that State.
"Lead me anywhere, for God's sake!" said I; "I'm as helpless as a mowdie on the sea-beach." He knew the wood as 'twere his own garden, for he had hunted it many times with his cousiri, and so he led me briskly, by a kind of natural path, to the first cairn. Neither there nor at the second did I get answer to my whistle.
A regular paved way, formed of sea-beach pebbles placed on a foundation of interlaced branches, led up to a hearth made of flat stones measuring some three feet every way. All about lay fragments of charcoal and broken nuts, the latter partly burnt.
It had its drawbridge, though now never drawn up, and its dry moat, the sides of which had been planted with shrubs, chiefly of the evergreen tribes. Above these rose the old building, partly from a foundation of red rock scarped down to the sea-beach, and partly from the steep green verge of the moat.
I was introduced; and we set off by way of Newhaven and the sea-beach; at first through pleasant country roads, and afterwards along a succession of bays of a fairylike prettiness, to our destination Cramond on the Almond a little hamlet on a little river, embowered in woods, and looking forth over a great flat of quicksand to where a little islet stood planted in the sea.
The sides of the lanes and bridle roads were often edged with prickly Cacti and a leafless Euphorbia, but the country being so highly cultivated there was not much room for indigenous vegetation, except upon the sea-beach. We saw plenty of the fine race of domestic cattle descended from the Bos banteng of Java, driven by half naked boys, or tethered in pasture-grounds.
Leaving the bookseller to employ himself with this astounding "order," Captain Bream next went to that part of the town which faces the sea-beach, and knocked at the door of a house in the window of which was a ticket with "lodgings" inscribed on it. "Let me see your rooms, my good girl," said the captain to the little maid who opened the door.
In the end I got out from among the houses, and arrived upon the sea-beach, where I discovered a sheltered pit among the sand hillocks, which they call denes, and there I lay down and slept off my weariness. When I awoke the sun was so far up that I judged it to be nearly nine o'clock.
"Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach from this house?" asked the Sergeant. He pointed, as he spoke, to the fir-plantation which led to the Shivering Sand. "Yes," I said, "there is a path." "Show it to me." Side by side, in the grey of the summer evening, Sergeant Cuff and I set forth for the Shivering Sand.
She spread her arms wide, as with a swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it. The palms, turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he interpreted. "I have mewed you here too long. You sigh for liberty." She nodded, drawing a long breath. "I come from the sea-beach, remember." "Say but the word, and instead of the mountain, the beach shall be yours."
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