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.