76 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



projected from Galveston to Camargo, in Mexico, near the Rio 

 Grande, a distance of 352 miles.* It is reasonably urged 

 that this road to Camargo the key to the commerce of Mex- 

 ico, by a land route would establish friendly commercial 

 relations with Mexico, and heal the irritation which keeps up 

 the border troubles, and thus prevent war ; while, in case 

 of war, it would furnish the means of quickly transporting 

 troops and supplies to the most important point of defence. 

 If the proposed road will accomplish this, it will directly pro- 

 mote the interests of the cotton and wool manufacturers of 

 the North.f To Texas, more than any other State, do the 

 textile manufacturers of the North look for the supply of 

 their mills. No other State is making such rapid progress in 

 population, production, and wealth. With an area which ex- 

 ceeds that of the German Empire by about sixty thousand 

 miles ; with a capacity to produce almost all the products of 

 the temperate zone ; with sugar lands on the Southern border 

 which could yield double the quantity of sugar and molasses 

 required for our whole consumption, Texas is above all pre- 

 eminent for its resources in textile material. On less than 

 one-half of one per cent of its area, it produced, in 1875, one- 

 half of all the cotton consumed in the United States; and 

 four per cent of its area would be capable of producing all 

 the cotton now consumed in Europe and the United States, 

 over six million bales. $ Add to this its capacity for wool pro- 



* " No such thorough and satisfactory mode of settling Indian troubles has 

 been discovered as the construction of a railroad through the Indian country. 

 The war-whoop of the savage is never heard within sound of the locomotive 

 whistle. The civilization that is represented by the church, the school-house, 

 and the farm, the Indian regards as his legitimate prey ; but, when it comes 

 clothed with the thunder of the advancing railroad-train, he retires from the 

 contest." Speech of Hon. William Windon, of Minnesota, in the U. S. Senate, on 

 the Northern Pacific Railroad. 



t We refer to this scheme as only one of the means of peacefully solving the 

 border troubles. A still broader scheme in the same direction, but with even a 

 more modest demand for government patronage, is the proposal for a govern- 

 ment survey of a railroad route from Austin, Texas, to the Rio Grande, and 

 from thence to the Port of Topolovocampo, on the Pacific ; the distance from 

 San Antonio to the western ocean being less than seven hundred miles. A 

 railroad in this direction would be a peaceful solution of the Mexican question. 

 J Report of Mr. Edward Atkinson on cotton, at the International Exhibition. 



