TEXAS. 



789 



affairs become fully settled, an extensive immi- 

 gration will set in, especially as its attractions 

 become better known. The sugar and cotton 

 region of Texas lies along the coast and a few 

 miles up the river bottoms. These lands, though 

 highly productive, are unhealthy, and require 

 large capital and extensive experience in the 

 raising of cotton and sugar to be cultivated 

 with profit. Higher up the rivers, and behind 

 the coast flats, is the cotton and corn region, 

 embracing what are called the central counties. 

 Though there are many small farms scattered 

 through these counties, they are preeminently 

 the seat of great plantations cultivated by the 

 aid of negroes and mules, and a small farmer 

 from the North would hardly feel at home 

 among them. All the bottom lands in this sec- 

 tion are deep, rich cotton soils, covered with a 

 very heavy growth of cotton- wood, sycamore, 

 elm, and other trees, crowded with under- 

 brush, twined with vines and overhung with 

 moss. They abound in alligators, snakes, 

 turtles, lizards, mosquitoes, and flies ; but when 

 cleared are among the the best cotton lands in 

 the world, and though somewhat unhealthy 

 are largely and profitably worked. Up to 1860 

 such lands sold uncleared at about ten dollars 

 an acre. The balance of these lands are prairie, 

 varying from a light sandy loam to the deepest 

 and blackest "hogwallow," all suitable for cot- 

 ton or corn. 



Northwest of the central counties lies the 

 grain region, which embraces all northern and 

 northwestern Texas, as far as the Indian coun- 

 try. Commencing on the Guadalupe southwest 

 of Austin-, the grain lands stretch in a wide 

 belt to the Red River. It is a beautiful rolling 

 country of prairie and timber, intersected by 

 most of the important rivers and their tribu- 

 taries. Along the banks of these clear, rapid 

 streams, are thousands of settlements, surround- 

 ed by fields of corn and grain, and herds of cat- 

 tle. And yet, as the traveller rides from cabin 

 to cabin, and from county to county, he feels 

 that the whole country is still almost a wilder- 

 ness. 



The Colorado, which runs in a northwesterly 

 direction through the centre of the State, forms 

 the southwestern limit of the reliable farming 

 region. Though the soil is good on the south- 

 western side of the river, and the country even 

 more beautiful as well as more healthy still fur- 

 ther west, there are comparatively few great 

 farms, and none entirely reliable for crops, be- 

 cause of the droughts that often prevail. The 

 most careless traveller is struck with the evi- 

 dences of a dry country everywhere. The 

 prairies grow gradually larger and larger fur- 

 ther west, and put on more and more of the 

 garb of a dry climate. The mesquit grass, 

 green, juicy, and sweet in winter, but brown 

 and rusty in summer, though still good for 

 stock, becomes plentiful ; the prickly pear and 

 the cactus appear, wood-lands grow scarce and 

 the river bottoms narrow, often with but a 

 thread of timber to mark the windings of the 



streams. Here in the long days of summer the 

 rich black prairies bake and crisp till they seam 

 and crack, and long winding clefts appear that 

 every day's sun opens more and more, till they 

 become traps into which both beast and rider 

 may fall. 



The great natural pastures, commencing upon 

 the coast and sweeping up to New Mexico on 

 the west, and thence around to the Red River 

 on the north, a thousand miles in length and 

 hundreds in width, are not left untilled because 

 lacking in wealth of soil, convenience of loca- 

 tion, beauty of scenery or purity of atmosphere, 

 for western Texas abounds in all these, but from 

 the absence of rain. Between the Colorado 

 and San Antonio is a territory common to the 

 plough and to cattle. Beyond the San Antonio 

 the country watered by the Aransas, the Nueces, 

 the Rio Pecos, and the Rio Grande, is all either 

 occupied by stock-raisers or still vacant, the 

 few plantations and farms once opened having 

 been abandoned after a disastrous experience in 

 waiting for rains. This great stock country has 

 hundreds of thousands of cattle, horses, and 

 sheep scattered over it, and living summer and 

 winter upon its grasses without ever tasting 

 hay or grain, and is annually sending to market 

 immense herds, as valuable as though they had 

 been fed through the long winters, and stall- 

 fed in costly barns on turnips and corn. 



The desert is a sandy, unwatered region, 

 thinly covered with coarse grass, in the vicinity 

 of New Mexico, including the "Staked Plains." 

 There is also a long strip of the same kind of 

 country between the Nueces and the Rio 

 Grande, a hundred miles wide, separating 

 Brownsville and the Mexican frontier from 

 Corpus Christi and the settlements on the 

 Nueces. The borders of the desert are avail- 

 able for pasture, but the interior is worthless 

 for want of water, which, however, may be ob- 

 tained by digging wells. The camping-grounds 

 of Gen. Taylor, on his march across the desert 

 from Corpus Christi to Matamoras, are marked 

 by the great wells he dug to supply his troops 

 with fresh water, some of which are still used. 



The rivers of Texas are generally clear, and 

 rapid, and shallow, and with unreliable naviga- 

 tion ; but subject to sudden overflows, when 

 every thing movable on the bottom lands is 

 swept away. The large rivers, like the Brazos, 

 owing to great rains in the regions of the head- 

 waters, often rise from low water to full banks 

 in twenty-four hours, when within hundreds 

 of miles there is not a drop of rain falling. In 

 the western part of the State this feature is 

 changed, and the Rio Pecos creeps so quietly 

 through an open, unmarked country, that a 

 traveller might ride within five hundred yards 

 of it and yet perish with thirst. 



Any one intending to raise stock in connec- 

 tion with corn and grain, may settle anywhere 

 north of the Colorado and west of the belt of 

 post-oaks that runs up through Bastrop, Burle- 

 son, Mil am, and Falls Counties, if he take care 

 to shun the Blackjack and Landy post-oak lauds 



