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LAS TEXAS Y LOS TEJANOS. 409 was built. Thence our way is down Main Trinity, at an average of five miles from the river. As all the timber lies along the streams, we are much of the time in a forest. It is estimated that one- half of that section of Texas east of the Trinity is still covered with the primeval forest. All the improvements worth noting are on the prairie, but a " free- nigger patch," with demoralized log- hut, occasionally appears in the low wooded bottoms, where that class mostly live. Inquiring of a philosophical native why this was thus, he replied : " Wall, they don't care for the breeze like we. Reckon they want to bleach out. You Northern folks are mistaken about that. ' Tain't the heat that burns dark ; it's the wind, a- stoppin' the sweat. Folks that live in-doors, or in the timber, an' sweat free, are whiter than up North. Find as fair girls in Galveston as ever you saw." Whether the colored American will, by operation of this principle, eventually become a white man, is another question. In Collin County we enter the cotton belt proper. Here is a region a hundred and fifty miles square, with this county on its northern boundary, which could be made to yield more cotton than is now grown in all the States east of the Mississippi. Not more than one acre in ten of this area is now inclosed ; and, of that inclosed, the smallest part is devoted to cotton ; yet the product is already im-portant. In the year 1870 the entire State had only 2,964,836 acres of land under cultivation, yet the cotton crop amounted to 350,628 bales. Thirty thousand square miles, suitable to the production of cotton, still remain in a state of nature. Peaceful as it looks along this route, a short ride would bring one into a hostile country. Not fifty miles west is the heavily wooded strip known as the Cross Timbers; and, just west of that, the Co-manche may occasionally be found in all his savage glory. Tradition tells of a time when these fierce nomads were at peace with the whites; and tells, too, I am sorry to say, that a long truce was broken by the cruel outrage and murder of a Comanche girl by a young Texan. The truth of this matter it would be hard to trace, but since that date the Comanches have waged unending, inexpiable war. Issuing from his hiding- place in the western highlands, the warrior descends with remorseless fury upon the settler ; and every man of the tribe has cost State or Nation thousands of dollars. Thence through Ellis and Navarro counties, the country is of the same general description, as far as Corsicana, where I make a long halt. Navarro and Corsicana husband and wife were wealthy and enterprising Mexicans who ruled this region, and owned most of it |
