A clump of timber in the open country. See a valuable contribution by Mr. Albert Matthews to Notes and Queries, 10 S. x. 413–5. He says this use of the word is confined to Texas.
1844. [We had to] keep a bright look-out … while passing the different mots and ravines scattered along our trail.—G. W. Kendall, ‘Santa Fe Expedition,’ i. 41. (N.E.D.)
1848. They [the mustangs] scattered off on all sides, through the openings between the motts.—C. W. Webber, ‘Old Hicks the Guide,’ p. 53 (N.Y.).
1853. After a pursuit of some twenty minutes, at full speed, it occurred to me that I might get lost among the motts, and reined up.—The same, ‘Tales of the Southern Border,’ pp. 27–8 (Phila.).
1853. His object was to drive the horse into a mott, or island of timber, he saw about a mile before him on the prairie.—Id., p. 148.
1854. But he had the rig on Jack again, when he made him charge on a brood of about twenty Comanches, who had got into a mot of timber in the prairies, and were shooting their arrows from the covert.—J. G. Baldwin, ‘Flush Times,’ p. 9.
1857. The country was much more wooded than yesterday, frequent mottes of live-oak, coppices of mesquit, and forests of post-oak, diversifying the prairie.—Olmsted, ‘Journey through Texas,’ p. 238 (N.Y.).
