Our citizens are generally intelligent, enterprising, industrious, religious, sober, and, laying politics aside, honest.—Texas Almanac.
COMAL COUNTY.
BY THE ASSESSOR.
Mostly settled by Germans. In this county there are in cultivation 600 acres in cotton, 15,000 acres in corn, 500 acres in wheat. The acre yields 500 pounds of clean cotton, 40 bushels of corn, 20 bushels of wheat. From 3,500 to 4,000 white inhabitants; 188 slaves; 396 farms. Improved lands $30, unimproved $3 an acre. Most of the farms are cultivatd by white labor; a white hand cultivates thirty acres of corn. Peaches yield abundantly; apples and quinces have been tried successfully. The wild grape, plum, cherry, mulberry, and blackberry grow luxuriantly. Wine of good quality has been made here.
New Braunfels is the county seat. It has 2,000 inhabitants, and boasts of having the only free school in the State, supported by aid from the State school fund, and by direct taxation on the property of the school district. Four teachers are employed, and there are 250 pupils.
The letters of my Texas friend give the following description of the climate of Texas:—
The climate of Texas is very peculiar. This is owing to the body of water to the eastward of it, and to the dry and elevated plain of the Llano Estacado, and the lofty mountains which lie to the westward. To these two causes are due the moisture and the cool temperature, and at times and in certain localities the excessive dryness of Texas.
The Gulf stream, in its course along the coast of Florida and in the Gulf of Mexico, has beneath it, running to the south, a cold stream, nearly down to the freezing point. The great equatorial current which strikes north of Cape St. Roque and through the Caribbean Sea is suddenly narrowed between Cape San Antonio and Cape Catoche; here the upper and warmer current, being condensed, strikes deeper, and forces to the surface the cold water from the under current, sometimes occasioning a roaring and very peculiar noise. By this means the Gulf stream is divided, part turning to the eastward around Cuba and between that island and Florida, and part turning to the westward, north of the banks of Campeachy, and striking Padre Island, an island upon the coast of Texas, about one hundred and forty miles this current strikes, there are very deep soundings, almost up with the land. South of this point, upon the beach, are found mahogany and other tropical drift-wood, brought there from the tropics; while north of it the drift wood is oak, ash, and cotton-wood, brought from the north by a current running counter to the Gulf stream, which I will hereafter describe. From Padre Island the Gulf stream strikes off to the north-east to the mouth of the Mississippi, thence around the coast of Florida and through her keys, until it joins the other branch. Inside the Gulf stream, along the coast of Texas, is the counter-current before referred to, making down the coast at the rate of two to three miles per hour, and bringing down the silt and mud of the Mississippi, Sabine, etc. I have seen the water off the Island of Galveston the color of chocolate, after a long norther.
Above the centre of Padre Island the coast of Texas deepens at the rate of about a fathom to the mile, until at twenty fathoms there is a coral reef, and on the easterly side of this reef the water deepens, as by the side of a perpendicular wall, to a very great depth. This reef marks the boundary of the Gulf stream, and also the boundary of the terrible tornado. The tornado of the Gulf of Mexico never passes this barrier, never strikes the land, nor has it been known within memory of man upon the coast.
It seems to confine itself to the course of the warm water of the stream, and the great 'Father of the Waters' spreads his counter-current down the coast of Texas, like a long flowing garment, fending off the storm and the whirlwind, and thus still better fitting Texas for the white man and the white man's labor.