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Show LAS TEXAS Y LOS TEJANOS. 413 against Yankee gun- boats, we enter on the two- mile trestle- work, which conducts us to the beautiful island and delightful city of Gal-veston. An island of hard white sand, thirty miles long and from one to four broad, rises evenly on every side from the salt surf; no-where more than ten or twenty feet above high tide, the location has just slope enough for convenient drainage. The city is on the north-cast end of the island. The streets run with the cardinal points, and are lined on both sides with heavy shade- trees. Except in the center of town and the business front, on the north side and known as the Strand, the houses are surrounded by oranges, oleanders and other Southern trees and flowers, the neat white dwellings rising from this dark green and leafy mass. All day the gulf breeze sweeps inland through the broad streets, and after an hour or two of sultry calm the land breeze blows outward all night. In the morning there is an-other warm calm of an hour or two, then the ocean breeze comes again. One would think it ought to be the healthiest place in Amer-ica. But there are drawbacks. About once in five years the yellow fever visits the place. The last time the city was almost entirely abandoned. Already the papers and physicians are arguing pro and con the momentous question, " Will it come this year?" Late arri-vals report it as very bad ac Rio Janeiro, and slowly advancing along the " Spanish main." It was a gala day in Galveston, and in the evening I found every resort thronged, while on the streets bands of music discoursed lively airs, and a thousand negroes thronged the streets, " happy as clams at high tide." San Jacinto was being celebrated, and every body and every thing Texan was mightily glorified. Nothing disloyal or unfriendly to the nation was heard, but there was a general agree-ment that Texas produced the bravest men in the world. I am too good- natured to differ with them. I have run down ten degrees of latitude in less than a month, from late winter to early summer, and begin to feel the effects of such a change. But in the open halls and on the wide porches of the Exchange, with the gulf breeze by day and the outward breeze by night, I soon get my constitution accus-tomed to a deal of rest, and like the lotus- eaters of Homer's fabled isle, having tasted the delights of an ocean beach in the tropics, noth-ing but compulsion takes me away. No man can ride on the beach there without falling in love with Galveston. Between the highest and lowest tide- mark is a nvm, white expanse, some two hundred yards wide, extending around the head of the island and down the southern side for thirty miles. The heaviest |