OCR Text |
Show 430 WESTERN WILDS. that it is so hot, but the heat continues longer, and in winter the extremes are painful. Warm, moist weather is generally followed very suddenly by a " blue norther" that pinches one fearfully. The streams are more sluggish, too, and malaria is to be apprehended. Some constitutions stand it very well, however. The grazing region proper is in the south- west and west. The central portion of Western Texas is regarded as the best sheep country m the State. It is a broken, high, rolling country, supplied with an abundance of rocks and clear rippling streams, and excellent ' grass. The sheep fatten easily, grow magnificent fleeces; and owing to the mild climate, the herders are very successful in raising the lambs, the percentage of loss being very small. Except in the southern part, most of Western Texas is too dry for agriculture to be a certain resource without irrigation ; but by reports of engineers, a considerable portion of the land can be watered by acecquias from the numerous rivers. By far the largest portion will remain a grazing ground for all time. In all the central and upper part of the State water- power is abundant. All kinds of useful minerals can be had in the various sections: iron in Burnet, Llano, Lampasas and Mason counties, of the best qualities; copper in several places, and salt in abundance. Gypsum is found in immense beds up in the desert region. Stretching over ten degrees of latitude, and from the 16 to 30 degree of longitude west from Washington, it is evident the State can not be described as a whole, or in any general terms. Every thing said about Texas, whether good or bad, is true if applied to the appropriate section. It reaches to within one- half degree of as far south as does Florida; wT hile its northern boundary is nearly continuous with the northern line of Tennessee. But its climate and productions are not determined by latitude alone. The entire State consists of one great slope or, perhaps more properly, a series of narrow plateaus, each breaking gently to the next lower from near the foot of the Rocky Mount-ains to the Gulf of Mexico. On the eastern border the slope is nearly due south, and on the extreme south nearly due east; but in four-fifths of the State it is south- east. From the high, bare plains of the Xorth- west, and from the wind- caves of the Rocky Mountains, the " blue northers " sweep down over the Llano Estacado and treeless plains of Young and Bexar Districts, and greatly modify the climate to a much lower latitude. But down the streams the increasing tim-ber lessens their force. The climate is singularly equable for the width |