, 1871-06-27
The Southern Pacific Railroad.


The Cincinnati Commercial Of recent
date con aims description Of the country
through which the Southern Pacific Rail-
road is to pass. The writer three. years
ago made The journey ID Texas emi1rant
train from Vicksburgf 10 Los Angeles.
Eastern Texas, he says, is full of low hills,
covered with growth Of scrubby timber.
The soil is good for cotton. The Texas
prairies are rolling, aud better adapted for
raising wheat than raising cotton. There
is much first cla2s bottom land, but crops
are uncertain oD account of droulhs. Far
ther west the vast plains of the Concho
are nearly level aud the soil is very good
but here, too, the lack of rains would be
unfavorable to agricultural development.
The dreadful staked plain, which is COW
cred thick with terrible thorny shrubs,
and extends for seventy miles, is bounded
on the west by the Pecos river, which the
writer thinks the most hideous and dismal
5 on earth, and Of which he gives :he follow
ing description:
''It is Just like a canal, only three or
four rods wide, and rushes swiftly in its
writhing channel right through the plain,
without any trees along is shores. All
its banks are whilened with the ghasily
skeletons Of cattle, for even the coyote
and the raven, those foulest Of all foul
creatures, slink siekeued and shuddering
away from those hideous regions of death.
The vast drove of cattle, after crossing the
Siaked Plain, seventy-fve miles without
water, rushed into the pools of crystal
alkali, and drank until they fell dead in
their tracks; or else plunged headlong
Into the dismal blood red river, and were
swept down by hundreds in its swift and
trracherous swirl, When we left the
Pecos at last, twelve hundred head from
our drove alone lay dead along its lOath>
some banks, or fed their fostering flesh to
its waves"
The Apache range Of mountains con-
sists of ''low sirrras- or chains flung to-
gether in an inextricable maze, with
kind of backbone in the middle three or
four thousand feet high" Tie ridges Of
naked rock appear like rusty iron. The
narrow valleys between are, however,
fresh and green with grass. There is a
natural pass about five miles wide through
these mountains, and on each side of the
range canon leading up 10 the pass by
a easy grade, 50 that the cars will not
ascend more than a thousand feet if this
route is followed. On the west side Of
this range is for a distance of one hundred
miles a series Of twenty or thirty miles
wide, their low sides not protecting them
from the fierce heat, but the soil is ex-
ceedingly rich, giving sustenance to cac-
tus bushes with stalks fifteen inches in
diameter = but here, as on the other side
Of the mountains, the heat and the drouth
make agriculture almost impracticsble.
Tie Valley Of the Rio Grande, called the
Valley of Onions, on account Of the i'm
mense silvery sweet bulbs of that vegeta-
ble grown there, consists chiefly of deserts
of gravel, amidst which are strips Of fer>
tile bottom land from hall mile TO three
miles in width. The richness of the soil
is inexhausible, but it cannot 6e culti-
waited without irrigation, for which fortu-
nately there are excellent means Near
El Paso these lands are thickly settled by
Mexicans, who raise magnificent crops of
wheat and onions. The population is
now more dense than the lands would
sustain by the shiftless cultivation they
bestow, but they exc out an existence by
the aid of enormous herds of goats, which
pasture on the neighbOring plains. In