settler had to encounter was the scarcity | ly, it offers homes and harvests to milland extreme cost of lumber. It sold as high as sixty and seventy dollars per thousand feet, and was often hauled hundreds of miles by ox teams. The Texan lumberman finds his market toward each of the cardinal points of the compass. The cleared lands in the valleys yield a good quality of cotton, to the extent of a bale of five hundred pounds to the acre. Some rice is grown upon the lowlands bordering the Gulf, as well as the staple known as Sea Island cotton. Seated securely beneath the head-light of a passenger locomotive, one day, the writer and a companion were projected ions who struggle clannishly with the poverty of the crowded cities in the East. This railway west of Longview has been built within five years. Prosperous towns and post stations are met now every few miles, where platforms are stored with cotton bales awaiting shipment. The soil is a wonderfully productive black sandy loam, averaging fourteen hundred pounds of seed cotton, fifteen bushels of wheat, twenty-five bushels of rye, and from forty to sixty bushels of oats to the acre. Occasionally our iron path led through belts of the peculiar woodlands known as the " cross timbers." More than once we caught glimpses of bounding deer herds in the high grass. With an exhilaration born of the pure atmosphere we breathed, we partook of a sense of freedom of which the whole generous scene was typical. Far into the vague nothingness of distance the land arose and fell in great measured cadences of form-billows upon a "boundless, pulseless ocean." Garden Valley is but one of a hundred such scenes of that day, where all the slopes leading down to the little willow-wreathed streamlets were carpeted with a vast profusion of flowers, as bright and varied as the tints of the kaleidoscope. Here we noted, almost brushing our speeding steed, crimson poppies, the verbena, portulacas, daisies, the scarlet blossoms of the cypress plant, petunias, China-asters with blossoms white, blue, and purple, whose species we in our botanical innocence knew not. More than once, upon sidings, we passed the prison trains-forbidding-looking cars, where gangs of convicts are immured when not at work upon the road or in the woods. Their striped forms were scattered along the track, while guards watched them like hawks, rifle in hand, from some coigne of vantage. At Dallas we crossed the line of the Texas Central Railway at a right angle. Dallas is a well-built and active city, whose one thought is cotton. A citizen, properly impressed with the importance of this staple in connection with the affairs of the world at large, remarked: "Wa'al, I guess 'cotton's king' yet, pretty much every where." Texans seem to have learned the lesson which the Georgians and other people of the older cotton States have just now comprehended, namely, that it "pays" to alternate crops, and that no lasting prosperity can be reared upon a single and exclusive staple. Cotton will always hold a chief place in the agriculturist's affections, because it is the only product which will command ready cash at its market value in the nearest town. The stranger who has crossed the large open square, or plaza, which is found in every Texan town, at an early hour in the day, will marvel at the change of a few hours. Before mid-day the cotton teams have arrived from the surrounding country, clustering upon every available space in the square and along the adjacent streets. would be impossible to portray a more animated or varied scene. Clumsy wag ons, drawn by little compact oxen, or pos It sibly by an ox and a mule, are constantly arriving, the men, women, and children mounted high upon the roughly bound cotton bales; the expert in cotton staple, who jumps nimbly, note-book in hand, from wagon to wagon, buying here, rejecting there, and bartering everywhere; the itinerant Hebrews, who press their cheap but showy goods upon the rusticsthese and hundreds who have each his own little bargain to drive, and, above all, the great Babel of purchase and sale. The journey to town on market-day is an event in the monotone of life with most of these cotton-growers. They throng the stores, ences like dust before a broom. I found an entertaining and not altogether safe field for the study of human nature at its very worst in a variety show at Fort Worth. Two hundred "cow-boys" composed the audience, whose broad felt hats bobbed approval in unison of the vile jests upon the stage, and gave the effect of a bed of toad-stools, while half a dozen worn-out graduates, male and female, of Eastern "vaudevilles" made up the company, whose stock in trade consisted of "gags" and conundrums of an age which was the only respectable feature of the entertainment. At Fort Worth the rail the walks, and patronize the grotesque fa- | road ends, as I have said, and the stage kirs, the side shows, and all the wandering brotherhood of minstrelsy, sure to be there when trade is lively. Texas is charged with some three hundred murders within the past twelve months, against which is credited eleven executions. An examination of the records will probably show that the great majority of these crimes, and all the train of attendant lesser outrages, were committed in the frontier towns, or just beyond. The termini of the several lines of railroad tending westward are favorite points of assemblage with the irresponsible and dangerous classes, which are swept on before the advance of civilizing influ line begins. The route thence to Fort Concho, and via El Paso to Yuma, on the southern border of Arizona, is said to be the longest in the world. It covers nearly sixteen hundred miles. Thirteen days are required to traverse the entire route.. The mails are brought through with uniform regularity. The veteran stager Colonel Chidester, who held the ribbons on routes in Central New York before the completion of the Erie Canal, and who knows every turnpike in Pennsylvania, is the manager and chief promoter of this line. The arrival and departure of the daily stage are a matter of considerable impor tance. It is the only means by which of- of the little windows all day upon mountficers of the army can reach their far-dis- ain, plain, and ford, to drop asleep wearily tant posts toward the Rio Grande. These again in the evening, waking to a repetiand the ranchers, the tourists, with fine tion of the previous day's journey, broken outfits and breech-loaders, bound on a only by the occasional change of horses hunt, the prospectors, the itinerant mer- and stoppage for meals: thus for nearly chants, make up the passenger list. The two weeks. Probably none will more great boot" is strapped down over the cheerfully welcome the union of the lines baggage behind; small packages are toss- of railroad, the one advancing eastward ed upon the roof; the driver and outside from the Pacific, and this side of Yuma riders are well blanketed in the early sea- at this writing, growing at the rate of a son; and as the Jehu cracks his whip mile per diem, and the other soon to reach over the leaders' heads, the long ride be- westward from San Antonio toward El gins. Through passengers are rare, most Paso. of the party dropping out within the first three hundred miles. He only can realize such a journey's trials who has waked at morn from uneasy sleep in a corner of a frontier coach, and gazed out Railroad projection in Texas deserves a chapter intact. The easy nature of the topography renders engineering a simple problem. Through lines, short-cuts, and branches are being constantly incubated. grow, by virtue of selection as termini, | compare with regions to the northward; into villages, and soon into towns of broad for instance, the wild and beautiful Indian avenues, four-story brick blocks, opera- Territory, within half a day's ride of Denihouses, fire-brigades, and brass - bands, son, and the Red River boundary. Austin, when, lo! the road is extended thirty or I think, presents the finest general effect. forty miles, and the whilom metropolis be- The Capitol is set well up above the river, comes a way-station, drooping to a mean and a mile distant, facing.down a broad and spiritless existence. Such is the pres-street, not unlike Pennsylvania Avenue, ent prospect before Fort Worth and Sherman, which are set at the two western extremes of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. And yet these cities are in the centre of rich and productive sections of the State. It is reasonable to expect that, after they have languished for a time, they will ac at Washington. The city is built of a cheerful tone of light brick, and a creamcolored native stone of fine texture, resembling that used by the Parisians. The main street is set at a right angle to the Colorado River, which is guarded by rounded heights. The most considerable |