to-day a handsome, solidly-built town on the Brazos, possessing many manufacturing establishments. Throughout all the adjacent region stock-raising is fast giving way to agriculture; and great fields of cotton, corn and cane are springing into the light. Everyone has heard of Dallas; it is set down on the banks of the Trinity River, and contributed to by the great feeders of the Texas Central and Texas Pacific. It grows like an enchanted castle in a fairy tale. Dallas is the center of Northern Texas; has superb water power, and lumber, coffee, iron, lead, and salt fields to draw upon. In the midst of the rich, undulating prairies, near a plateau covered with noble oaks, elms and cedars, it promises to be beautiful, as well as prosperous. It is one of the centers of the wheat region, also; and in its vicinity are some of the finest wheat lands on the continent. The absolutely best wheat region is said to be in Lamar, Hunt, Kaufman, and Navarro counties.

The eastern corners of the lands now settled in Northern Texas were nearly all held by emigrants from Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi until the railroad's advent, when the North-westerner joined them in the country, and the Northerner mingled with them in the towns. Slavery flourished there before the war, and the revolution neither improved the negro or his old master much; so that both are gradually yielding before the new comers. In the northern and middle counties, however, slavery never was popular. Some three thousand families were introduced into those counties between 1843 and 1854 from Indiana and Illinois; they owned no slaves, and never desired any; and the influence of their example was good even before emancipation came. There hundreds of intelligent and cultured families live happy and well-to-do, sowing their wheat and rye in October, and reaping it in June; planting corn in February, to harvest in September; and raising great herds of cattle and horses. The black, sandy lands are admirably suited for orchards and vineyards; and the "black waxy," a rich alluvial, for all the cereals. All the cotton lands of northern Texas will readily produce a bale to the acre; how many years will pass before the cotton crop of the Lone Star State will be 10,000,000 bales?

The negro does but a small share of the labor of cultivation in the State, as the

colored population is comparatively small. The labor question is to be an engrossing one very soon. It is more than probable that in due time Chinese labor will be introduced upon the alluvial lands along the Gulf coast. Millions of acres, fit for the cultivation of sugar and cotton, are lying idle. Even plantations, once flourishing, are now deserted. The Chinaman is already at St. Louis; the completion of the Texas Pacific Railroad will establish him along the whole Texan coast. At present, in great numbers of the counties, there is hardly one negro to fifty white people, so that Cuffee stands no whit in the way of John.

With one single field of coal covering 6,000 square miles; with apparently inexhaustible copper and iron stores; with lead and silver mines; with 20,000,000 of acres of cotton-bearing land; and with agricultural resources equal to those of any State in the Union, Texas can enter upon her new career confidently and joyously. As a refuge for the ruined of our last great revolution, she is beneficent; as an element of greatness in the progress of the United States, she has no superior. She has peculiar advantages over her sister Southern States; while they court emigration in vain, the tide flows freely across her borders, and spreads out over her vast plains. Whatever danger there may be of political disagreements and disturbances within her borders, nothing can permanently trouble her progress. Lying below the snow line, she furnishes the best route to the Pacific; and fronting on the Gulf, she will some day have a commercial navy, whose masts will be seen in every European port.

Few persons who have not visited the South appreciate the vast extent of territory which the Texas Pacific route has opened up. Its most beneficent work will be the chasing of the Indian from the vicinity of the "cross-timber" country, which is an excellent location for small farmers. The settlers there are bravely holding on to their lands, keeping up a continual warfare with the red-skins, in hopes that they may preserve their lives until the advent of the rail. The Indian reserves in this section of the State have, according to the testimony of competent authorities, all been failures, whether considered as protection to the white man or as a means of civilization to the Indian. For ten years the savage has been master of all that part of TexThe new Pacific route will not only

as.

send a civilizing current through there, but will also develop a portion of the great "Staked Plain" territory, now one of the mysterious unknown regions of northern Texas. The Transcontinental branch is not only doing good pioneer work, but also runs through some of the oldest and most cultured counties in the State. Clarksville, in Red River County, has long been a center of intelligence and refinement; it was settled early in 1817, and in 1860 had nearly 17,000 acres of corn and 8,000 acres of cotton under cultivation. It is noteworthy that in this county lands which have been steadily cultivated for fifty years show no depreciation in quality. Paris, a handsome town in Lamar County, is also touched by this line. These towns and counties offer a striking contrast to other portions of the northern section which lie within a day's journey on horseback of them. They are like oases, but the rest of the apparent desert is being so rapidly reclaimed, that they will soon be noticeable no longer. Let him who wishes to cultivate fruit, cotton, or the cereals in Texas visit these elder counties.

My first experiences of Denison were during its infancy, when it had attained the tender age of five months. It was a yearling when I saw it for the second time, and the most wonderful changes had taken place. The Texas Central Railway line was completed. Northern and Southern Texas were connected, and Pullman cars were running through the untamed prairies. The gamblers and ruffians had fled. Denison had acquired a city charter; had a government, and the rabble had departed before law could reach them. A smart new hotel, near the railroad, was doing a huge business; hundreds of people thronged its dining-rooms weekly. Above Denison, at the river, another town had sprung up, an offspring of the Texas Central, and was ambitiously called "Red River City." Newsboys called the daily paper about the streets of Denison; we heard of the Opera-house; we saw the announcement of Church services, and notices of meetings for the discussion and advocacy of new railroad routes were numerous.

I confess to a certain feeling of disappointment in not having found more marked peculiarities in the people of Texas. There are, of course, phrases and bits of dialect which distinguish them from the inhabitants of other sections; but even the rude farmer in the back country is not

as singular as he has been represented. In extreme Southern and extreme Northern Texas, the visitor from the North or West would see but little variation from his own types in the cities; yet in the remote districts he might find more ignorance and less idea of comfort than he would have thought possible in America. There are a good many instances of rude and incult rich men; people who are of the old régime, and who, owning thousands of cattle, sheep, and horses, live in log-houses, eat mean food, and do not have more than one suit of clothes in ten years. But these people are mysteriously vanishing before the new comers. At first they set their faces fiercely against innovation; are indignant at frame houses, railroad stations, and saloons; but presently they find that they must yield or perish, and they either go farther off, or yield. The general characteristics of the farm of a Texan farmer of the old style were unthrift and untidiness; the land was never half tiled, because it produced enough to support life without being highly cultivated. When a fence fell into decay,-if by some strange chance there was a fence, the rails or boards lay where they fell; people grew up like weeds, and choked each other's growth. Those who held slaves counted their wealth in "niggers," and sometimes boasted that they were worth a hundred thousand dollars, while living in meaner and more uncomfortable fashion than the poorest Irishman at the North. The only amusement of the paterfamilias was a hunt, or a ride to the county seat in court time, where there was usually some exciting event, in those days when every one carried arms, to disturb the monotony of existence, and perhaps to disturb existence itself. There was no market, no railroad within hundreds of miles, no newspaper, no school, save perhaps some private institution miles from the farm or plantation, and no intellectual life or culture whatever. The rich slaveowner was a kind of patriarchal savage, proud of his own dirt and ignorance. The heroic epoch of the struggle for independence being over-thousands of persons settled down to such life as this; and thought it vastly fine. What a magnificent awakening has come to them!

The mass of people in the interior still have a hearty scorn for anything good to eat. The bitter coffee, and the greasy pork, or "bacon," as it is always called, adorns most farmers' tables still. A rail

road president inspecting a route in Northern Texas, stopped at a little house for dinner; the old lady of the homestead wished to treat her guest with becoming dignity, so, after having spread the usual food before him, she inquired in the kindest manner, "Won't ye have a little bacon fat to wallop your corn dodgers in now, won't ye?" This was the acme of hospitality in that region. Now and then some housewife in these days of immigration, will venture a timid "Reckon ye don't think much of our

THE CAPITOL AT AUSTIN.

home-made fare, do ye?" when the visitor is a stranger; and, indeed, he shows upon his face his wonder that a well-to-do farmer's stout sons and pretty daughters are satisfied with the deadly pork and molasses, the clammy biscuits, and no vegetables whatever. The negro is responsible for the introduction of such oceans of grease into Texan cookery; it suited his taste, and the white people for whom he cooked mutely accepted it, just as they insensibly accepted certain peculiarities of his dialect, notably "dat 'ar" and "dis yer," and "furder" for further, a word so shockingly mispronounced that one stares to see good-looking white people use it as if they though it right. The Texan has one phrase by which he is easily recognized abroad: he says "I reckon so," with the accent on the last word; it is his common phrase of assent. In the country, when riding on horseback, and inquiring how far it is to a certain place, you will

now and then be told that it is "two sights and a look," which you must understand if you can. There is in Western Texas a more highly-colored, vivid, and dramatic manner of talk than in the rest of the State, doubtless the result of long contact with the Spaniard and Mexican. In parts of Northern Texas too, among some classes, there is a profanity which exceeds anything I have ever encountered elsewhere. In Western Texas it is fantastic, and, so to speak, playful. I once traveled from Gal

veston to Houston in the same car with a horse drover who will serve as an example. This man was a splendid specimen of the Texan of the plains, robust and perfectly formed; there was a certain chivalrous grace and freedom about all his movements which wonderfully impressed one; his clear cut face was framed in a dark, shapely beard and mustache, which seemed blown backward by the wind; he wore a broad hat with a

silver cord around it; I felt impelled to look for his sword, his doublet and his spurs, and to fancy that he had just stepped out of some Mexican romance. His conversation was upon horses; his clear voice rang high above the noise of the car wheels, and, as he laughingly recounted anecdotes of adventures in ranches in the West, I noticed that almost every third word was an oath. He caressingly cursed; he playfully damned; he cheerfully invoked all the evil spirits that be; he profaned the sacred name, dwelling on the syllables as if it were a pet transgression, and he feared that it would be too brief.

Even in bidding his friend good-bye, he cursed as heartily as an English boatswain in a storm, but always with the same cheeriness, and wound up by walking off lightly, laughing and murmuring blasphemous assent to his friend's last proposition.

The people of Texas suffered greatly from the war; thousands were ruined by it. Young and old, together, went to the fight, returning only to find ruin staring them in the face, and the poverty which was so bitter hangs by them still. The sudden fall from large fortune to daylabor, so general in Louisiana, smote Texas sternly. But never was a people more cheery, on the whole; it is resolved to attend to the rebuilding, and to accept the advent of

"New men, new faces, other minds."

The beauty of the fair southern land is but faintly shadowed in these pages. It is too intense to admit of transfer. But no visitor will ever forget the magic of the climate-never guilty of the extremes of heat or cold, which we suffer in the North, and yet so varied that the most fastidious citizen may suit himself within his home boundaries. One cannot forget the beauty and wildness of the great western plains, nor the tropic luxuriance of the southern shore. He cannot forget his pilgrimage to Mount Bonnell, Austin's guardian mountain, rock strewn and steep; nor the Colorado running between its steep banks, with the wooded slopes beyond melting softly into the ethereal blue; nor the long, white roads, bordered by graceful live-oaks; nor the bayous, along which the whip-poor-wills and chuck-will's widows keep up lively chorus all night long.

Nor will one visitor forget how, just at dawn, he saw a troop of hundreds of Texan cattle fording a shallow stream, and leaving a track of molten silver behind them, as the sun smote the ripples made by their hurrying feet; nor how, by night, as the slowly moving train stole across the lands, millions of fire-flies flashed about the fields, and made fantastic figures in the darkness; how sometimes the team passed a campfire, around which were gathered a group of gaunt and weary emigrants; how, now and then, stole up behind the train some weary figure, bent and ragged, with pack upon its back, plodding its way

ward the land of promise; how the darkies at the little stations where the iron horse stopped to refresh himself, sang quaint songs as they threw the wood into the engine's tender; how mahogany-colored old women besieged him with platters, covered with antique" spring chicken" and problematic biscuits; how hale, stalwart old men

with patriarchal beards and extraordinary appetites for tobacco, talked with him of the rising glory of Texas, and informed. him that this was a mighty State, sir; fast rising to the lead, sir; had come out of the war gloriously, sir; and, sir, enough for all the world in her broad acres, sir; yes, sir.

Nor will he forget the motley throng of Mexican prisoners, straggling into the streets of Austin, charged with murder most foul, their great beads of eyes glittering with demoniac hatred under the gray of their sombreros; nor the pretty maidens dismounting from their restive. ponies at the "horse-blocks" in front of the shops, and trailing their long. overskirts before the merchants' windows; nor the groups of naked-breasted negro men at the corners of the streets, chattering like parroquets over some trivial matter; nor the disguised army detective, slouching about the public places in the clothes of a western ranchero, prospecting for deserters; nor the gaunt teamsters from the borders of the San Marcos, the Guadalupe, or the San Antonio, with their halfmelancholy, half-ferocious look; nor the erect military figure of " the Governor," with his keen, handsome face and blond Prussian mustache; nor the typical land-agent, with his bland smile and diffuse conversation about thousand-acre tracts and superb locations; nor the dusty and pallid travelers descending from the El Paso stage, their Winchester rifles in their hands, and their nerves strained with eight hundred miles of adventurous stage travel.

Nor will he forget how one morning, on the banks of the beautiful Colorado, a ghastly cross-tree affronted the sky, and around a platform a great throng of white, and black, and brown men, American, and negro, and Mexican, gathered to see two men die. He will not forget how the criminals came to the gallows tree; nor how they gazed from the scaffold round about for some sympathetic desperado to help them; how, finding none, one broke into the derision of a shuffling dance, and made a blackguard speech, and then fainted when the rope was placed about his guilty neck; how the crowd, finding them thus at death's doors, jeered and unmercifully mocked the two men until the scene was over; nor how the gallows was left vacant, standing as a perpetual warning.

Nor will he forget the moonlit evenings in the gardens of the southern coast, where the thick clumps of cedar joined their