IMPEDIMENTS TO TRAVEL IN TEXAS. 33 



possibly one Peach-tree to each family, though I consider that a 

 high estimate. At all events, not one family in every ten has either 

 fruit-tree, grape-vine, or sti'awberry-bed, down to this hour; and 

 fruit makes no part of the average meal. Yet the profusion of 

 wild grapes (Mustang) in the Brasses bottoms, covering nearly 

 every tree for miles after miles, argues that choice Grapes would 

 grow here if any one would only plant them ; while I know that 

 Peaches and Strawbex'ries are haixlly anywhere more luxviriant or 

 prolific. Almost every one owns land ; those who do not, easily 

 might ; but the great majority seem content to live as the pioneers 

 of Texas had to, on coarse, gross food alone, when they might have 

 Fruits, Milk, &c., by moderate exertion. The girls woi-king in 

 Lowell factories would strike the first day that they were fed like 

 the family of a Texas planter who owns five thousand acres of land 

 and a large stock of cattle. 



I speak of these things at the risk of giving ofiense, because they 

 ought to be discussed till corrected. The Texas pioneer, living a 

 hundred miles fi'om anywhei'e, with a neighbor to each ten miles 

 square, no roads and no bridges, had to fare as he could. That is 

 no reason for cherishing his privations after all excuse for them 

 has passed away. If half the money spent in the State for Liquors 

 and Tobacco were devoted to making dwellings comfortable and 

 supplying their tables with fruits, &c., the whole people would be 

 happier and better. 



A few words as to the cities : 



I missed Austin, the State capital, by an accident and an all-night 

 thunderstorm, which stopped me at Giddings, the present western 

 terminus of the Texas Central Railroad, leaving 55 miles (rapidly 

 diminishing) of staging over ti-acks which might be converted into 

 roads were not the railroads so soon to supersede their most impor- 

 tant use. As they are, 18 hours are usually required to traverse' 

 them ; but the stages which I didn't take at Giddings had not reached 

 Austin two days after they started — the usually dry water-courses 

 haA'ing been converted by the rain into raging torrents which could 

 not be crossed. Had I duly reached Austin, I hoped thence to make 

 New-Braunfels, the nucleus of the principal German settlement in 

 Texas and the seat of considerable manufacturing industry, and 

 thence (if possible) San Antonio, the Capital and pride of Western 

 Texas, which boasts a population of 15,000, with a tendency to rapid 

 increase. Within two years, it will have been reached by the Tnter- 

 3 



