﻿131 



MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



ings had aroused great enthusiasm for this scheme of coloni- 

 zation, was appointed General Commissioner for the Company 

 and came to Texas in May, 1844, to prepare the way for the 

 expected immigration. He purchased a grant of land in what 

 is now Comal County, and when the first instalment of five 

 ships and 150 families arrived at Galveston in November, 

 1844, he conducted them to Port Lavaca and then up the 

 Guadalupe to its junction with Comal Creek, where he 

 founded the city of Neu Braunfels, named for his old German 

 home, and erected his ''castle" upon an eminence near by 

 after the old German custom. ' 

 _ Mr. Lindheimer, learning of this effort at German coloniza- 

 tion, met the immigrants on their arrival on the coast, was 

 gladly received into the company on account of his local 

 knowledge, and assigned a share in the land-allotment at 

 New Braunfels, where he thereafter made his home. There 

 is a good description of Lindheimer at this time in Roemer's 

 "Texas" (p. 133): 



"In the first days of my sojourn in New Braunfels I formed 

 an acquaintance, which was highly prized and very agreeable 

 during the whole time I remained there, and to which I now 

 look back with special pleasure. 



"At the end of the village and at some distance from the 

 last houses stood, half-hidden amid a clump of elms and oaks 

 and hard by the brink of Comal Creek, a cabin or small house, 

 which, with its enclosed garden in front, afforded by its appear- 

 ance and position a true ])icture of the idyl. As I for the first 

 time approached this simple, rustic habitation, I beheld be- 

 fore the entrance of the cottage a man busily engaged in 

 splitting wood and apparently not unaccustomed to this 

 labor. So far as the thick black beard, which covered his 

 whole face, permitted it to be seen, he appeared to be a man 

 at the beginning of the 40's. He wore a blue blouse open in 

 front, yellow leather breeches and coarse shoes, such as are 

 customary with farmers in this country. Beside him lay two 

 beautiful brown-spotted bird dogs and fastened to one of the 

 neighboring trees was a dark-colored pony. 



"According to the description, the man could only be the 

 one for whom I sought and who answered me in the language 



