64 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 





I.IKS AI.ONG ' 



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>>-" the railroad came, a few years 

 £ is ago, this remote, isolated region 

 was practically unknown to 

 Americans at large. It is still a 

 wild, thinly populated, stock- 

 growing district. The natives 

 plow and haul largely with ox- 

 teams. As one writer said, 

 "Even if Texas has been occu- 

 pied by white men for four cen- 

 turies, it is still somewhat new 

 in spots — and big spots at that." 

 Zachary Taylor built a fort in 

 1846 hard by this same Browns- 

 ville. When his men got into a 

 shooting scrape with Mexican 

 soldiers from Matamoras they 

 started the Mexican War, and 

 the Rio Grande became the 

 boundary between the two re- 

 publics. 



Up the river from Browns- 

 ville lies Laredo, most important 

 border town in south Texas, 

 even if an old map does call this 

 vicinity "a wilderness filled with 

 wild horses." Here you may 

 still see the ruins of old stone 

 houses and tanks built by Span- 

 ish planters generations ago. 



Laredo staged many dramatic 

 events in the stirring annals of 

 Texas. Today, however, the 

 people have turned from ro- 

 mance to onions. They shipped 

 2.500 carloads in one season. 

 Till the International and 

 Z "% " Great Northern Railway ex- 

 8 c I 1 tended its line from San Anto- 

 k j3 5 nio. Laredo also was shut off 

 > a 'rt from the rest of Texas; now it 

 § ""« y is the main port of entry for 



< ^J traffic with Mexico City, over 

 z -3 ~ . the Mexican National Railway. 

 u \ ..2 Eagle Pass, on up the Rio 

 g S? J> rt Grande, was a favorite camping 

 •p, ag.S spot for the California gold- 



< "o & « hunters in '49. Yankee freight- 

 ^ ~'z '?. crs from St. Louis, too, used to 



drive through here for Chihua- 

 hua and Durango. 



Worn, weather-beaten carretas, 

 clumsy carts with solid wood 

 wheels sawn from huge logs and 

 built wholly without nails or 

 spikes, are occasionally seen even 

 now. abandoned in some brush- 



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