168 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



my way down to breakfast, that I believed it 

 was going to rain ; and I added, sententiously, 

 " More rain, more mud." " Yes," said the boy, 

 quick to resent an imputation upon the climate 

 of Texas, " and the more rain, the better crops." 

 The State, it appears, has suffered greatly from 

 drought for the past few seasons, and no doubt 

 its people can well afford to play the mud-lark 

 for a week now and then in winter. It makes a 

 difference whether you are a selfish, pleasure- 

 seeking tourist, thinking only of to-day's com- 

 fort, or a man with his living to make out of a 

 cotton plantation or a market garden. 



For the present, if the tourist wishes, as I do, 

 to walk in the country, he may do worse than 

 betake himself to one of the numerous railroad 

 tracks.^ These have carried me into good places 

 and shown me many interesting birds ; but they 

 would be more convenient if they were not walled 

 in, mile after mile, except as a highway or a plan- 

 tation road crosses them, by an excessively high 

 and close barbed-wire fence. Yet even this hate- 

 ful obstruction has served me one slight good turn. 



A man of something like my own age and build 



^ Since this letter was first printed I have been warned more 

 than once that walking upon railroad tracks, in the South- 

 western country, at least, is an unsafe proceeding, for a man 

 alone and unarmed; and I think it right to pass along the 

 caution. 



