noon
I could not help feeling a strange sensation of loneliness , as I passed hill after hill , and wood after wood . It seemed to me as if something was wrong ; I talked to myself , and often looked behind to see if any one was coming my way . This feeling , however , did not last long , and I soon learned that , west of the Mississippi , a man with a purse and a good horse must never travel in the company of strangers , without he is desirous to lose them and his life to boot . I rode without stopping the forty-five miles of dreary road which leads from the hot springs to Little Rock , and I arrived in that capital early at noon . Foreigners are constantly visiting every part of the United States , and yet very few , if any , have ever visited the Arkansas . They seem all to be frightened away by the numerous stories of Arkansas murders , with which a tourist is always certain to be entertained on board one of the Mississippi steam-boats . Undoubtedly these reports of murders and atrocities have been , as all things else are in the United States , much exaggerated , but none can deny that the assizes of Arkansas contain more cases of stabbing and shooting than ten of the other States put together .