In this closing chapter of our book, we have thought that a brief outline sketch of the topography, climate, soil, and productions of Texas might not be uninteresting to the reader. And in order to this, we shall speak first of its grand geographical divisions, as characterized and distinguished by peculiar products. And first we will speak of Northern Texas, which is distinguished for being the wheat region of the State. The wheat region proper embraces about thirty counties, of which Dallas County may be regarded as the center, containing about thirty thousand square miles. The rich black soil is especially adapted to wheat-growing. It yields in ordinary seasons, and under the imperfect cultivation that it gets as yet, twenty-one bushels to the acre as a mean average; and in occasional instances the quality is so superior as to weigh seventy-two pounds to the bushel. After the first year of the late civil war the supply of flour was principally from Northern Texas. Its quality was superior to any flour we have ever seen in Illinois. The soil is equally favorable to all the other cereals that are produced in the Northern States. The soil on and near the Upper Brazos is reddish, and is now considered the best for wheat on account of the solution of gypsum that it holds, and which is regarded as an important quality in a wheat-producing soil. It wears better and longer than other soils.

The southeastern and southern-central counties are the best cotton-growing region, the most fertile of all lands in the State, and for any thing, like an equal area, the best for cotton that can be found in the world. The cotton counties proper constitute about one-quarter of the State. The region also includes several millions of acres of sugar lands, often quite equal to those of Louisiana. Sugar has been produced in considerable quantities near the mouths of the Brazos and Colorado Rivers.

The topographical face of the country, in the cotton and sugar section, is quite uniform on the coast belt of it. Galveston and Lavaca are, respectively, ten and twenty-four feet above the level of the sea; Houston, which is fifty miles from the former port, is sixty feet; Columbus, which is eighty-five miles from the coast, is two hundred and fifty feet; Gonzales, something over one hundred miles, is two hundred and seventy feet. This shows a very moderate rise, of only a foot or two per mile, from the coast far inland.

San Antonio, one hundred and forty miles from the sea, and outside of the cotton region west, is six hundred and thirty-five feet above sea-level. The table lands and the desert, called Llano Estacado (Staked Plain), in Northwestern Texas, are two thousand and two thousand five hundred feet, and some elevations are five thousand feet above the sea.

In point of climate Texas claims to be called the Italy of America. The mean temperature corresponds, and is equally clear and glowing. Its peculiarities over other climates of latitude are found in its unwavering summer sea breeze and winter northers. The first is a delightful alleviation of its summer heats, flowing each day from the Gulf as the sun's rays become oppressive, and extending remotely inland to the furthest settlements with the same trustworthy steadiness. It continues through the evening, and has so great effect that, however hot the day may have been, the nights are always cool enough to demand a blanket, and yield invigorating rest.

The severe northers occur from December to April. They come with varying durations—from a few hours to two or three days, and seldom extend beyond the general period of forty days. The rapid reduction of temperature from seventy-five to thirty-five degrees, and the driving wind, are keenly felt. When accompanied with heavy rains and sleet, as is sometimes the case, not often, the cattle suffer and die off in large numbers. These northers are not unhealthy, but invigorating, and do not cause nor aggravate pulmonary diseases. Pneumonia is sometimes developed by them, but with half the caution that we exercise in the winters of the North, its attacks may be avoided.

As in all new, warm, and highly fertile countries, the low rich river bottoms, especially of Southern Texas, which are covered with a profusion of semi-tropical vegetation, are unhealthy to unacclimated persons. The higher lands are healthy, if the emigrant make a proper disposition of himself, which is too frequently otherwise. The atmosphere of the lower Brazos, at Richmond and thereabouts, was particularly poisonous to the writer. Three days' residence there would suffice to bring on chills and fever, and then a retreat of a week up the country seventy-five miles would suppress them.

San Antonio has been in former years quite a favorite resort for consumptive invalids seeking the improvement of health. The native Mexicans used to tell a story of its healthfulness that has the Yankee smack to it. They said some travelers, approaching San Antonio, met three disconsolate-looking fellows, who were hastening away from the city. They asked them what was the matter, and where they were going. They replied that they had met with reverses, that they wished to die, and were going to some place where they could die.

Yellow fever is imported into the coast towns as it is into New York and Philadelphia, but it does not originate there. Its ravages, as would be expected in such a climate, are sometimes severe, but it does not penetrate into the upland and hilly regions any more than it does into the interior of New York or Pennsylvania.

Times of Planting and Harvesting.—Plowing can be done in every month of the year. This is an immense advantage by way of economizing labor. It is done in January and February for the field crops. Early garden vegetables are planted in January. In February the prairies are green, corn mostly planted, and oats, barley, peas, etc., are sown. In March fresh pasturage is quite abundant, though the old has not failed during the winter, and about half the corn is planted. In April the balance. Then sheep are shorn, and potatoes, peas, and wild berries appear in market early in the month. In May small fruits are gathered; apricots ripen toward its close. In June corn is ready for harvesting, and peaches are ripe. In July first cotton-picking comes. We have seen new bales of cotton for sale in Galveston on the 4th of July. Cotton-picking continues to the close of November. December is a plowing, cleaning, and picking-up month.

The above statements refer to average seasons in the central and southern latitudes of the State, and to the ordinary culture of the main crops. Some of them might be grown earlier, and would ripen if not planted till months later. Most garden vegetables can be planted throughout the season, so as to afford a constant repetition of them for the table.

Wool Production.—Wool husbandry is a large and important interest in Texas. Sheep can be grown with high profit for domestic uses on the moderately elevated dry sound lands of all parts of the State. But the sheep region proper—that where the pasturage is best adapted to them, both in summer and winter, where with safety and health they can be herded in great flocks, and where the land is cheap, and wool can be most cheaply grown for exportation—lies in Western Texas. It is bounded on the east and west by the Guadalupe and Nueces Rivers, and so far as yet experimented, north by the Colorado River, say from Bastrop upward.

South of San Antonio the sheep region is generally level, descending with a moderate slope to the coast. But the hilly country, commencing five or six miles north of San Antonio, is regarded par excellence as the sheep region. The hills further north become more abrupt, with narrower valleys between, and large river bottoms are reached. The present center of the sheep region is Kendall County, appropriately named after the late George Wilkins Kendall, the senior editor of the New Orleans Picayune, one of the best conducted and most readable newspapers in the United States. He and Horace Greeley served their apprenticeship together in the office of the Concord (N. H.) Statesman. In 1834 he went to New Orleans and established the Picayune, and entered on his career of success.

He went to the Mexican war under Ben McCulloch with the Texas Rangers. He died October 22, 1868, at his residence in Kendall County, thirty miles north of San Antonio.

He was the great sheep-farmer and flock-master of the South, the pioneer of that branch of husbandry in Texas; and he did more than all others to introduce, foster, and instruct the people in its management in a region so adapted by nature to its profitable pursuit.

Kendall County and a dozen counties around it are supplied with streams of water in abundance, clear, and healthful, and springs, some of them, of great volume. On the larger streams is a good supply of timber of various kinds. There are large groves of post-oak, affording mast for innumerable hogs. The hills are generally bare of vegetation except grass, which consists of varieties of the mesquite, probably the finest grass for sheep and beeves in the world, and quite equal to the white clover of the North. It is short, fine, exceedingly palatable and nutritious—stands drouth well, and springs up like magic after every shower. It is not entirely killed down by winter, and subsists flocks throughout the year without the necessity of artificial food. It is only necessary for the emigrant to secure a homestead, including land enough to raise family supplies from, and his stock of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, can be pastured on the outlying ranges with no expense except for herdsmen and shepherds. No rental to any body. Indeed, a single man can hire his board, and without owning or hiring a foot of land, can keep large flocks and herds. And this condition of things must continue beyond the lifetime of the present generation.

Texas stretches through ten and a quarter degrees of latitude, from twenty-six to thirty-six and one-fourth degrees, over seven hundred miles. And then it reaches through twelve degrees of longitude, which, on the thirty-second parallel, would make the width of the State about seven hundred miles. The State government has already laid off one hundred and fifty-seven counties, with an area in square miles of one hundred and ninety-six thousand two hundred and ninety-nine. Territory not laid off in counties, over one-quarter of the State, including the mountainous part, seventy-two thousand three hundred and eighty-five square miles. Total square miles in the State, two hundred and sixty-eight thousand six hundred and eighty-four. The State is between five and six times as large as the State of New York, and more than three and a half times larger than all New England. None of the noted kingdoms of Europe approach its dimensions except Russia. Vast portions of it are still in a state of nature, and the balance of it is thinly populated.

There is no grand climatic or latitudinal division of the State but offers its peculiar and special inducements to immigrants. Wheat, the finest in the world, and other cereals, with fruits, etc., of all kinds, in the north, cotton and sugar in the southern-central and southeast, pine lumber and cypress in the east, and stock in the west.

Southwestern Texas is a very peculiar portion of the State, and may be geographically described as lying between the San Antonio River on the east, and the Rio Grande on the west, and south and southeast of the road running from San Antonio to Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande, containing about thirty thousand square miles.

After the establishment of San Antonio, which we believe was in the year that Philadelphia was settled—called Bexar by the Spaniards and Mexicans—many years passed before any settlements were attempted between that post and the garrisons and towns west of the Rio Grande. The first in point of time was that of Senor Barrego, who in the forepart of the seventeenth century established a stock-raising hacienda at a place called "Dolores," on the Rio Grande, twenty-five miles below the present site of Loredo. He received a grant from the King of Spain, of seventy leagues of land. This hacienda was afterward destroyed.

In 1757 the town of Laredo was founded. This place was a sort of "Presidio" (Fort) where the inhabitants were armed occupants of the soil. And it proved the only permanent settlement of the Spaniards on the lower Rio Grande. After this ranches and haciendas were gradually extended over the country, between the Nueces River and Rio Grande. And during the first quarter of the present century extensive herds of horses and cattle, and flocks of sheep, were pastured between the two rivers. The remains of the stone buildings, water tanks and wells, are still to be seen. The troubles attending the attempt of the Mexicans to separate from Spain invited the savage hordes from the north, which had been kept in better subjection under the system of Spain than they have ever been since, to make raids upon the frontier settlements, which caused the country to be nearly vacated again.

The Texas revolution and subsequent border warfare gave the finishing touch to this country. And when the United States troops under General Taylor marched from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in 1846, not an inhabitant was to be found between the Nueces and that river. It had the appearance of an immense desert to the army, unused as they were to such treeless pampas. The immense herds of cattle and horses, left to take care of themselves, had become wild, and had greatly increased; and as "mustangs" grazed over those plains in almost countless hosts, it was entirely dangerous for a man to approach them, particularly on foot, and much more so even on horseback. The old king mustang, and his male subordinates, would first drive the herd into corral by making a rushing, neighing circuit around them, and then make a fearful dash at the human intruder, striking, kicking and biting him to death.

In 1850 the repopulation of that country fairly commenced. The mustangs were killed or caught and tamed, and "that so-called" desert has been steadily filling with a hardy and active race of stock-raisers.

As the country now stands, the climate is decidedly unfavorable to agriculture. And unless some plans, on a magnificent scale, can be devised and executed, by which to irrigate that vast and rich country, the main dependence will always have to be, as heretofore, on the flocks and herds. The climate is unseasonable; but not so much for want of rain; for take the seasons through, ample supplies of rain fall for all purposes, if they only came at the right time, and in proper quantities. The planting time is from January to May, and that is the dry period of the year. It often happens that not sufficient rain falls during those months to "wet a pocket handkerchief." When it rains it rains. And during the other months of the year the torrents that fall upon the country will aggregate twenty-five to thirty inches. It is not extravagant to affirm that if the water could be utilized in some, as yet undiscovered way, that country would be the finest in the world. The desert (?) would "bud and blossom as the rose," in all temperate and semi-tropical products. The climate, on account of the dryness of the winter and spring, is as healthy as could be desired.

We think something might be done by making earth tanks on a large scale, thereby creating immense artificial lakes at convenient points, and at proper distances, to be used for irrigating purposes when necessary, and thus redeem that beautiful country from agricultural waste. It can not be done, however, by private capital and enterprise, nor by small corporations, but might be by heavy ones, under the material encouragement and patronage and aid of the General and State governments, by money and land grants, as to railroad corporations. And doubtless, in time, something of the kind will be done when the public good shall demand it. The gardens in and around San Antonio, and along the river for miles and miles, are irrigated from its waters, by little ditches running in all directions, from a big ditch or canal, that was originally built by the Spanish government when its various missions were established along the San Antonio valley. But if nothing of the kind should be done in the future, that country will forever remain the finest stock-raising section in the United States—the paradise of horses, sheep and cattle. There is little doubt that the tame cattle herds of to-day outnumber the wild ones of half a century ago. And one day southwestern Texas will export half a million of beeves yearly.