the garb of a traveller. He rode

up,

and I saw

from his equipage that he was a traveller. I arose from a seat, and drew an elegant rifle pistol on him and ordered him to dismount. He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle and pointed down the creek, and ordered him to walk before me. He went a few hundred yards and stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made him undress himself, all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered him to turn his back to me. He said, If you are determined to kill me, let me have time to pray before I die.' I told him I had no time to hear him pray. He turned round and dropped on his knees, and I shot him through the back of the head. I ripped open his belly and took out his entrails, and sunk him in the creek. I then searched his pockets, and found four hundred dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a number of papers that I did not take time to examine. I sunk the pocket-book and papers, and his hat, in the creek. His boots were brand new, and fitted me genteelly; and I put them on and sunk my

.

old shoes in the creek, to atone for them. I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they were brand new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as ever I straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better style than I had been for the last five days.

66

Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four good horses and started for Georgia. We got in company with a young South Carolina just before we got to Cumberland mountain, and Crenshaw soon knew all about his business. He had been to Tennesse to buy a drove of hogs, but when he got there pork was dearer than he had calculated, and he declined purchasing. We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at me, I understood his idea. Crenshaw had travelled the road before, but I never had; we had travelled several miles on the mountain, when he passed near a great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw asked me for my whip, which had a pound of

lead in the butt; I handed it to him, and he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian, and gave him a blow on the side of the head and tumbled him from his horse; we lit from our horses and fingered his pockets; we got twelve hundred and sixty-two dollars. Crenshaw said he knew of a place to hide him, and he gathered him under his arms and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in the brow of the precipice, and tumbled him into it, he went out of sight; we then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which was worth two hundred dollars.

"We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend went to a little village in the neighbourhood and saw the negro advertised, and a description of the two men of whom he had been purchased, and giving his suspicions of the men. It was rather squally times, but any port in a storm; we took the negro that night on the bank of a creek which runs by the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him

through the head. We took out his entrailsand sunk him in the creek.

"He sold him the third time on Arkansasriver for five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him into the hand of his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic scene and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of secresy, as a game of that kind will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity. He sold that negro for two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they can never graze him unless they can find the negro ; and that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and cat-fish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day to the silent repose of his skeleton."

It will be observed that in the account of his murders, by the cold-blooded villain, whenever he conceals his victim in the water, he takes out the entrails. This is because when the entrails

are removed, the body will not rise again to the

surface, from the generation of gas cccasioned

by putrefaction.

As it is but five years since the conviction of Murel, it may be supposed that society cannot be much improved in so short a period. But five years is a long period, as I have before observed, in American history; and some improvement has already taken place, as I shall hereafter shew; still the state of things at present is most lamentable, as the reader will acknowledge, when he has heard the facts which I have collected.

The two great causes of the present lawless state of society in the South are a mistaken notion of physical courage, and a total want of moral courage. Fiery and choleric in his disposition, intemperate in his habits, and worked upon by the peculiarity of the climate, the Southerner is always ready to enter into a quarrel, and prepared with pistol and bowieknife to defend himself. For the latter he cannot well be blamed, for in the present state of