SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES ai 
desired to be separated from Coahuila and recognized as a State of the 
Republic of Mexico. This was not acceded to, and instead Mexico in 
1830 forbade further colonization by adjacent nations and in 1832 
placed the coast region under military rule. All this caused so much 
discontent that in 1832 the uprising began which led to the declaration 
of independence from Mexico in 1835. An attempt at subjugation by 
Mexico led to the crushing defeat of the Mexican Army under Gen. 
Antonio Lépez de Santa Ana at San Jacinto, near Houston, by the 
Texans under Gen. Sam Houston in 1836. From this time to 1845 
Texas was an independent republic, with ministers to foreign courts 
as well as to Washington. Mexico repudiated the treaties made after 
the Battle of San Jacinto (ha-seen’toe) and made various raids with 
transient success. The proffer of annexation to the United States 
made by Texas after the Battle of San Jacinto was accepted only 
after nearly 10 years, when, in December, 1845, Texas was admitted 
as a slave State. 
Texas as a division of Mexico did not extend beyond the Nueces 
River, but the Texas Congress in December, 1836, marked the limit 
as the Rio Grande. Mexico protested against this claim. After the 
Mexican War brought the Territory of New Mexico into the United 
States the compromise of 1850 removed from Texas the part of New 
Mexico that lies east of the Rio Grande and areas now included in the 
States of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming. For this and 
other items relinquished Texas received a payment of $10,000,000. 
The Sabine River has long been important as a boundary line, more 
or less contested. In 1806, by virtue of a semiofficial treaty between 
contending military authorities, it became the western boundary of 
a neutral territory extending from the Rio Hondo branch of the Red 
River (the present Calcasieu), and by the Florida Purchase in 1819 it 
was made the boundary between the United States and the Spanish 
possessions in the Southwest. 
The traveler crossing Texas will be strongly impressed by the great 
change in vegetation that occurs every few hundred miles. This 
change is closely connected with climate, particularly the diminishing 
rainfall, and the increasing elevation to the west. Eastern Texas, 
with a mild, humid climate, has the Gulf flora, with longleaf pine 
(Pinus palustris) ,* the cane (Arundinaria macrosperma), bald cypress 
(Taxodium distichum), and many other characteristic species. About 
Orange, on the Sabine River on the Coastal Plain, only a few feet 
above sea level and with 50 inches of annual precipitation, there are 
many swamps with cane and reeds, cypress, and tupelo; bottom- 
land forests with magnolias, bays, pecans, hollies, oaks, gums, and 
*8 Most of the botanic terminology | of Texas, by J. M. Coulter, Contr. U.S. 
in this section is taken from the Botany | Nat. Herbarium, vol. 2, 1891-1894. 
