LOn^EIl RIO BliAVO. 



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ten miles from the mouthy wliere there is a small settlement of ^frxioann engaged in agriciilfure 

 upon a very limited scale. 



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M»ut)i or tlic Rio Bravo del .\i>rtt. 



At the mouth of the river there are a few frame houses erected by the army in IS 16, now 

 owned by the steamboat company engaged in the navigation of the river. Opposite is a small 

 Mexican settlement called Bagdad, where the Mexicans from the interior, as far as Monterey, 

 resort for sea bathing. The sites on either side of the river are very unsafe. A few years 

 before the Mexican war, the whole population was swept off except the pilot, an American, 

 who, with his family, took refuge on the top of the sand-hill upon which my observatory was 

 afterwards erected. 



Beyond Burrita, the river still pursues its serpentine course through alluvial soil, with an 

 occasional patch of arable ground occupied by Mexican rancheros engaged in the cultivation of 

 maize and the rearing of goats and chickens. 



At the Eancheria de San Martin, a mouth of the Pvio Bravo, forty feet wide, opens on the 

 American side into the Laguna Madre, allowing some of the water of the river to escape to the 

 sea by the Boca Chica and the Brazos St. lago. On the American side the road leading from 

 the mouth of the river to Brownsville crosses this outlet at San Martin, over a substantial 

 wooden bridge erected by the army. 



From this point upward to Browufiville the river makes a great bend to the South^ and is so 

 winding in its course that frequently the curves almost touch. The land on each side is level, 

 and covered with a dense growth of heavy mezquite, (Algaroba.) It is generally too high for 

 irrigation, and the climate is too arid to depend with certainty upon rain for the purposes of 

 agriculture. The vegetation is of a semi-tropical character, and the margin of the river, which 

 is exposed to overflow, abounds in reed, canebrake, palmetto, willow, and water-plants, 

 and would no doubt produce the sugar-cane in great luxuriance. 



