“Every year vast fields of grain lie golden and ripe for the harvest, where a short time ago plover and partridge hid in the prairie grass. Along the coast the rich plantations of sugar cane wave and rustle in the breeze, and the smoke of the sugarhouses at grinding-time is black against the sky.
Ashbel Smith.
“In Stephen F. Austin’s day there were little patches of cotton about the cabin doors of the settlers. To-day Texas grows one-third of the cotton raised in the world. No fleece so white, no stalks so weighted with bursting bolls, no fiber so strong and yet so delicate, as that of the cotton of Texas.
“I see,” the Genie might continue, “I see orchards of fruit trees, and vegetable gardens, and rose bowers, making green and glad the face of the country.
“I see at Galveston and Sabine Pass the largest ships now sailing with ease, where in 1863 the Westfield and the Clifton grounded in mud or on a sand-bar.
“A mighty bulwark, sprung up as if by magic, stretches its arms around the Island City and guards it from any fury of the sea.
“The mysterious and limitless pools and lakes which lie far below the surface of Texas soil have been forced into service. I see artesian wells spouting their sturdy columns of clear healing water in hundreds of places; and reservoirs of oil, whose fountain-head no man knows, yield their priceless gifts to the hand.
“Herds of cattle swarm about the great ranches of the west; while in the vast unfenced solitudes soft-eyed antelopes, and other wild creatures of the forest, still rove in primeval freedom.
“Libraries spring up; new institutions for the afflicted arise; smiling homes invite to comfort and repose the thinning ranks of the veterans of the Southern Confederacy.