TEXAS 



5769 



TEXAS 



of hawthorn, holly and magnolia trees, filled 

 with the notes of the mocking bird, the most 

 common song bird of the state. In the south- 

 eastern section, the lowlands and flat prairies, 

 extending westward from the coast, rise gradu- 

 ally to low hills which in the west become high 

 and rugged. 



The great Black and Grand prairies of the 

 east-central section are the finest agricultural 

 regions in the state. Toward the west these 

 prairies become broken and rise to meet the 

 Great Plains, a vast, treeless table-land, rising 

 in a series of steppes from an elevation of 700 

 feet to the mountains west of the Pecos River. 

 The northern part of this section, known as 

 the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain, extends 

 into New Mexico. 



West of the Pecos River the elevated plains 

 of gama and buffalo grass are crossed by four 

 spurs of the Rocky Mountains. These lofty 

 masses, locally known as "lost mountains," do 

 not form continuous ranges. There are several 

 peaks over 8,000 feet in altitude. Except for 

 growths of yucca and mesquite, the lower slopes 

 of the mountains are bare of trees, but their 

 summits are clothed with dense forests. 



The entire Texas coast is bordered by long 

 sandbars or islands which enclose shallow coast 

 lagoons. Padre Island, the largest of these bars, 

 is 100 miles long and is the most noted island 

 of its kind in the world. Others are Galveston, 

 on which the city of the same name is situ- 

 ated, Matagorda, Saint Joseph and Mustang 

 islands. There are several shallow bays, in- 

 cluding those of Galveston, Matagorda, Corpus 

 Christi and San Antonio, in the deepening and 

 dredging of which the government annually 

 spends many thousands of dollars. 



Rivers and Lakes. All of the forty-four 

 rivers of the state except the Red and the Cana- 

 dian, which empty into the Mississippi, belong 

 to the Texas system, and all but the Rio Grande 

 and its tributary, the Pecos, which rise in the 

 mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, have 

 their sources in the Texas table-land or plains. 

 The rivers have a general southeast course and 

 empty into the Gulf of Mexico. In the west 

 the streams are swift and clear, but near the 

 coast they become sluggish and muddy, and 

 their channels are often obstructed by sandbars. 



The Rio Grande for most of its length of 

 1,800 miles forms the boundary between Texas 

 and Mexico. In times of high water it is navi- 

 gable as far as Rio Grande City. Its principal 

 tributary is the Pecos, which flows south across 

 the western parts of the state. The most im- 



portant river is the Brazos, which flows for 900 

 miles through the richest and most developed 

 section in the state and is navigable forty miles 

 from the Gulf at all seasons of the year. The 

 Red River, rising in the Great Plains, forms 

 part of the northern boundary, and the eastern 

 boundary is formed in part by the Sabine 

 (called by the Mexicans Sabinas, meaning cy- 

 press), which flows south to the Gulf, through 

 dismal, moss-hung cypress swamps. The Colo- 



OUTLINE MAP OF TEXAS 

 Showing: boundaries, navigable rivers, chief cit- 

 ies, iocations of rrineral wealth and the highest 

 point of land in the state. 



rado, fed by the Concho, San Saba, Llano and 

 smaller streams, cuts its way through beautiful 

 deep canyons and empties into Matagorda Bay. 

 Other rivers of importance are the Neches, 

 Guadalupe, Trinity, San Mario, San Antonio 

 and Nueces. 



Texas has no large bodies of water, but there 

 are many small, fresh-water lakes in the coastal 

 plain, among which are Grand, Clear and Sa- 

 binas lakes. Caddo Lake lies on the Louisiana 

 border, and salt ponds are found near the 

 mouth of the Rio Grande, in the Llano Esta- 

 cado and the Trans-Pecos region. 



Climate. Within the vast bounds of Texas 

 the climate ranges from the moderately tem- 

 perate to the subtropical. Along the southeast 

 coast the country is low and the climate warm ; 

 in the northeast it is low and damp but cool ; in 

 the. central and western regions it is high, dry 

 and cool. As one leaves the coast and passes 

 through the prairies and plains to the western 

 mountains, the climate grows uniformly cooler, 

 the temperature ranging from 73 on the Lower 



