DEVELOPMENT. 705 



The prejudicial idea that the counties west of the Pecos River are a worth- 

 less desert, has prevented up to this time the utilization of the resources of this 

 part of the State, and caused the loss of benefits to the public which might 

 have been derived from this neglected country. 



Former legislatures and administrations in general were misled by, I will 

 term it mildly, superficial reports, and by information of free grass men, of 

 whom one or the other was the owner of one, perhaps of one quarter, section 

 of land, on which they had water; or of parties who rented or simply occupied 

 one or two sections fronting on the river. They could control from these 

 small patches the grass of more than one hundred miles of pasture without 

 paying any rent; moreover they frequently ruined, for a number of years, the 

 •pastures by overstocking, and it was only their interest to point out the 

 drawbacks, and not to show the brighter side of the country. As long as 

 the Indians infested the far West Texas, no sensible commission was over- 

 anxious to extend its personal observations to any distance from safe points, 

 and after the Indians were gone the notion that Trans-Pecos Texas, covering 

 between thirty and forty thousand square miles, was valueless, a mere desert, 

 with the exception of a few hundred square miles of river bottom on the Hio 

 Grande, was accepted as confirmed gospel truth, and no serious attempt was 

 ever made to ascertain the facts, though a good deal of school and university, 

 in short public, lands are located in this part of the State. The same preju- 

 dice against the character of Trans-Pecos Texas prevented any attention 

 being paid to alleged old Spanish and Mexican grants, which only ten years 

 ago, even still later, might have been bought, to use a slang phrase, for a mere 

 song; or if suit should have been brought against the claimants, it would 

 probably have been turned over to the State, since the defendants would not 

 have thought it worth defending. Now only part of the Lerma grant, the 

 most valueless part besides, is claimed to be worth about one and one-half 

 millions of dollars, and a law suit is pending to recover damages to that 

 amount. 



But even if lawsuits about these grants had been decided against the 

 State, the taxes on nearly two millions of acres, or about three thousand 

 square miles of land (covered by grants), would have paid well for the trouble, 

 court and other expenses, and left a nice surplus, counting only the last ten 

 years. Another drawback to the development and utilization of Trans- 

 Pecos Texas, be it mining, farming, or grazing land, is the division into al- 

 ternate sections. True, the mineral claims allowed by the Texas mining law 

 (600x1500 feet) cover enough ground to justify prospecting; they are as large 

 as anywhere in the mining districts of the United States, or in Mexico, 

 where the size of a denunciamento (claim) is regulated by the dip of the lead. 

 But in the mining districts of the United States the entire claim necessarily 



