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their first encounter, the subordinate officers, chiefly from West Point, executed their orders with the precision of a field day exercise, showing beyond all question the utility of military education and discipline, and putting to rest at once the attacks on the Military Academy, which had become so formidable that few believed it possible to sustain the institution a year longer.

The general description of this part of the country will apply equally to all the coast of Texas, from the mouth of the Rio Bravo to the bay of Corpus Christi-indeed to Matagorda bay. It is well known to be a low, flat coast, with soundings diminishing regularly in depth as you approach the shore. The first shore-line is that of an island varying from some hundred yards to several miles in width, and penetrated at various points by inlets with shifting bars, few of which are practicable for the entrance of even the smallest sea-going craft. Separating this from the main land are shallow lagoons, as variable in breadth as the island which separates them from the ocean.

When the army marched from Corpus Christi to Point Isabel, General Taylor attempted to transport his supplies by the lagoon separating the two places, but found it impracticable even with small boats. These lagoons abound in delicious fish and fowl.

Proceeding inward, the land bordering the lagoons is, in the first ten or twenty miles, usually a flat prairie, composed of alluvial soil and sedimentary deposites of the ocean in alternate layers, showing how gradual and well contested have been the encroachments

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of the land upon the sea. The rivers taking their rise in the cretaceous formations, both the sedimentary and alluvial deposites are heavily charged with lime, making the soil rich, black, and fiery-often so surcharged as to destroy some descriptions of vegetation. Within this belt, salt lakes of value are not unfrequently found, and throughout its whole extent spots

occur devoid of vegetation, and encrusted with a white saline deposite. Most generally, however, the vegetation is a luxuriant coarse grass which grows nearly waist-high, with an occasional clump of live oak bordering the wet places. I think it likely this whole belt of country has been formed in the following manner: the trade-winds from the southeast are felt here with considerable force, and, blowing inward for nine-tenths of the time, fill the lagoons with salt water. Suddenly the wind will shift in a contrary direction, and blow with violence for two or three days, called there a norther, forcing the salt water out to sea, and leaving the dry places to be covered by fresh water, thus forming alternate layers of salt and fresh water deposites.

This coast, as well as the whole coast of Texas, is sometimes swept by terrific tornadoes, which produce marked changes in its topographical and hydrographic features. In the latter part of the month of September, 1854, on my passage in the steamship Louisiana from New Orleans to Indianola, we encountered a violent hurricane. A few days afterwards we entered the mouth of Matagorda bay, and found the channel had been improved by the storm. It was deepened two feet, and instead of finding only nine, we found eleven feet of water on the bar, and the channel straightened. This beneficial effect remains, I am told, to this day. This hurricane, which swept the town of Matagorda level with the ground, and destroyed every wharf in the bay of Matagorda, except that upon which our instruments were placed, forced the water out of the bay at such a rapid rate, that it could only escape by deepening and widening the channel. After passing the belt of prairie, we find a ridge of low sand-hills which seem to have marked the former limits of the coast, and here for the first time going towards the interior, we meet with clumps of post-oak called mots. The trees are usually crooked and wind-shaken, and unfit for timber.

Throughout this second belt or steppe, which extends many miles into the interior, wherever sand occurs to give consistency to the limestone soil, we find this growth in great abundance.

This admixture of soil produces the richest cotton and corn-growing soil in the world; but west of the Nueces, and between that river and the Rio Bravo, the want of rain makes agriculture a very uncertain business, and as we approach the last named river, this aridity becomes more marked, and the vegetation assumes a spinose stunted character-indeed, so marked is the change, that when we get within a few miles of the river the vegetation is a complete chapparal. West and south of the Nueces the country is sometimes exposed to excessive and long continued droughts, and it is doubtful if agriculture can be made profitable without irrigation; all the region between that river and the Rio Bravo is, however, a fine grazing country, and the numbers of horses and cattle that ranged it, belonging to the settlers on the Rio Bravo under the Spanish rule prior to 1825, are incredible. To this day the remnants of this immense stock are running wild on the prairies between the two rivers. Hunting the wild horses and cattle is the regular business of the inhabitants of Loredo and other towns along the river, and the practice adds much to the difficulty of maintaining a proper police on the frontier to guard against the depredations of Indians and the organization of fillibustering parties. In times of agitation and civil war on the Mexican side, parties assemble on the American side ostensibly to hunt, but in reality to take part on one side or the other in the affairs of our neighbors. I had heard a great deal of these wild horses, but on an examination of many hundred that had been caught, I never saw one good one. They are usually heavy in the forehand, cat-hammed, and knock-kneed. Their habits are very peculiar; they move in squads, single file, and seem to obey implicitly the direction of the leader. They evince much curiosity, always reconnoitring

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the camp of the traveller at full speed, and when there chances to be a loose animal, be he ever so poor and jaded, he is sure to run off with the crowd and disappear entirely. Many a luckless horseman passing through this country has been left on foot by the "stampede" caused by the visits of these wild animals.

Passing through that region in 1852, after a long journey of several thousand miles, my animals so jaded and worn down that I considered nothing could stimulate them to a gallop, my line was charged by one hundred and fifty of these animals, and six mules with a heavy wagon, containing all the astronomical and other instruments of the boundary commission, followed them across the prairie at full speed for nearly two miles. The coolness of the driver, and the boldness of the wagon-master, who threw himself in front of the lead-mules, stopped their further progress.

The section of country, particularly that part under consideration, is traversed by deep gullies called arroyos, sometimes difficult to pass in wagons. The sketch here presented shows one of these arroyos crossed by the road leading to Loredo.

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These arroyos are natural consequences of the unequal manner in which the rain falls throughout the year. Sometimes not a drop falls for several months; again, it pours down in a perfect deluge, washing deep beds in the unresisting soil, leaving behind the appearance of the deserted bed of a great river.

The streams which are found in this country have their rise in limestone regions, and the water is very unwholesome even when the stream is flowing, but usually the beds of the streams are partly dry, and the water is found standing in holes. Superadded to its noxious mineral ingredients, it holds in solution offensive vegetable matter, and is disgusting to drink; yet it is Vol. I-8

upon this water that our soldiers are kept nine-tenths of the time while watching and pursuing the Indians who are constantly making incursions from the Mexican side into the settlements of Texas. While the country was in the military occupancy of the Spaniards previous to the revolution of 1825, they provided against this inconvenience by making at certain stations great reservoirs of solid masonry to catch the rain-water. The remains of many of these wells were found, and they form one of the many external objects to be seen throughout the extent of the frontier which convey the impression that the country has steadily gone backwards since the days of the Spanish rule.

Having now given the general view of the country on the American side of the first section of the boundary, I will ask the reader to ascend with me the Rio Bravo along the boundary, where I will describe in detail all that is worth noting as high as the mouth of the Rio San Pedro, or Devil's river, from which point we will take a general view of the country on the Mexican side, comprising the States of Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and New Leon.

Before ascending the Rio Bravo, it may be as well to state that the appointments for the survey of the river consisted mostly of light boats unsuited to hydrographic work in the open Gulf; and not wishing to incur the expense of an outfit for the limited surveys required by the treaty, outside the river, I proposed, with the concurrence of the Secretary of the Interior, to obtain the co-operation of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, who had several well equipped parties in the Gulf, and whose operations I knew would eventually be extended to that locality. Under this arrangement, by which the boundary commission paid the expenses incidental to changes in its original plan of operations, and by which it was agreed that the hydrography should be done by the Coast Survey, and the astronomy and topography by the boundary commission, Lieut. Wilkinson, in command of the brig Morris, repaired at the appointed time to the mouth of the river and made soundings, marked on sheet No. 1, by which we were enabled to trace the boundary, as the treaty required, "three leagues out to sea."

This survey was conducted in the summer of 1853, that in which the yellow fever scourged the whole Gulf coast; yet up to the time of leaving the station, late in the summer, no case of the disease had occurred on board the vessel, and but a single one among the land parties. In conformity with a promise made, I took passage in the "Morris," which was not entirely sea-worthy, and went with the party to Pensacola, where the yellow fever was raging, and we had to lament the loss of the surgeon, Dr. Bryan, whose high professional skill and many social virtues endeared him to all who were honored with his friendship. Several others of the party, myself among the number, were taken down and narrowly escaped the fate of Dr. Bryan.

The voyage across the Gulf, which should have occupied five days, was, owing to adverse winds, gales, and the condition of the ship, extended to eighteen days. I had an opportunity on this voyage to watch narrowly the effect of the storms on the barometer, and observed for the first time a fact which, I believe, has since been well established, that in the Gulf the fluctuations of the barometer fail to give the usual indications of the approach or subsidence of storms.

The entrance to the mouth of the Rio Bravo is over a bar of soft mud, varying from four to six feet deep, and the river within a few hundred yards of its mouth is not more than one thousand feet wide. The shore-line of the coast, scarcely broken by the action of the river, is formed of a series of low shifting sand-hills, with a scanty herbage. Inside these hills are numerous salt marshes and lagoons, separated by low belts of calcareous clay but a few feet above the level of the sea, and subject to overflow. The first high ground is Burrita,

ten miles from the mouth, where there is a small settlement of Mexicans engaged in agriculture upon a very limited scale.

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At the mouth of the river there are a few frame houses erected by the army in 1846, now owned by the steamboat company engaged in the navigation of the river. Opposite is a small Mexican settlement called Bagdad, where the Mexicans from the interior, as far as Monterey, resort for sea bathing. The sites on either side of the river are very unsafe. A few years before the Mexican war, the whole population was swept off except the pilot, an American, who, with his family, took refuge on the top of the sand-hill upon which my observatory was afterwards erected.

Beyond Burrita, the river still pursues its serpentine course through alluvial soil, with an occasional patch of arable ground occupied by Mexican rancheros engaged in the cultivation of maize and the rearing of goats and chickens.

At the Rancheria de San Martin, a mouth of the Rio Bravo, forty feet wide, opens on the American side into the Laguna Madre, allowing some of the water of the river to escape to the sea by the Boca Chica and the Brazos St. Iago. On the American side the road leading from the mouth of the river to Brownsville crosses this outlet at San Martin, over a substantial wooden bridge erected by the army.

From this point upward to Brownsville the river makes a great bend to the South, and is so winding in its course that frequently the curves almost touch. The land on each side is level, and covered with a dense growth of heavy mezquite, (Algaroba.) It is generally too high for irrigation, and the climate is too arid to depend with certainty upon rain for the purposes of agriculture. The vegetation is of a semi-tropical character, and the margin of the river, which is exposed to overflow, abounds in reed, canebrake, palmetto, willow, and water-plants, and would no doubt produce the sugar-cane in great luxuriance.

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