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Show LAS TEXAS Y LOS TEJANOS. 411 way, not counting the land as an important item. They say " so many bales to the hand/' and consider eight or ten bales for each worker a fair average. The planters are rich in land and cattle, but their style of living is strangely primitive. Farm- houses are of an open, roomy sort, with porches on three sides usually, built against heat rather than cold. Milk and butter are accounted luxuries. There is but one grade of society among whites, all living very much alike ; the negroes alone constituting the " lower classes." The latter are lazier than the whites, which is a dreadful thing to say of them. They might, in ten years, own half the land in the country if they would work steadily. Fleas are the curse of the country. In Corsicana the dust seems to breed them, and house- keepers have a regular science of ways and means to get rid of them. Other undesirables are the tarantula and centipede, the former a badly slandered creature at the North ; for it is comparatively harmless, and death very rarely results from its bite. The centipede's sting is more venomous; it never strikes unless hurt or disturbed, but its venom causes the flesh to rot from the afflicted part, leaving the muscles bare. But all unite in saying they never knew it to cause death. I am, therefore, inclined to pass as fabulous the statement a " returned volunteer " once gave me of this creature : " An insect, sir, that runs like lightnin', and spits a juice that'll knock your eye out at a rod off; hit's got a diamond eye, a back like a hairy spider, and a belly like a tobacker worm, with a thousand an' forty-four legs ; each leg has four stingers, and every stinger carries second death." From Corsicana the train on the Texas Central Railroad carried me nearly straight south, leaving the valley of the Trinity and bearing across the high country to the Brazos. Not one acre in ten of this region is under fence. All the rest is common pasture, though most of it belongs to private owners, and is for sale at two to six dollars per acre. The region is high and gently undulating, about one- fifth in timber, the rest fertile prairie. My next stopping place was Houston, which I thought, at first view, the most beautiful place in Texas. There had been a twenty- four- hours' rain, and at 9 A. M. the sun shone out clear ; the orange groves, magnolias, and shade trees looked their richest green, and Houston presented to the newly arrived Northerner a most enchanting appearance. That city, the original capital of Texas, is at the head of Buffalo Bayou, a long projection of Galveston Bay, but for some days there had been quite a current owing to late and heavy rains. Three steamers were anchored in the narrow |
