Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1875-05-11
An OIa TexInn in Mexico.

Gen. Ham. P. Bee. (son of Gen.
Barnard L. Bee, onee Secretary of Wal
Of the Republic Of Texas.) went tc
Mexico on the downfall of the Southern
| Confederacy in 1865, and has made his
home there ever since, A letter from
him to an old friend is published in the
Dallas Herald. He says:
/ have passed years of bitterness since
we parted at Monterey, in the spring oil
1865; have been vietimized, and some
times on the border of hunger for my
children; but ! have seen my bright
days, and more than once have found
strong and true friends to help me.
For two years / have been in this, the
"Laguna country" on the main road
from Saltillo Porra, to chihuahua, in the
State Of Durango. This is, beyond
question, the cotton country Of the
continent. / made a crop in 1874, OF
two hundred and thirty bales, of FIVE
hundred pounds each. 1t was my first
year and as | commenced with nothing,
/ do not complain. We have had a
mild winter; no ice, snow, cold or rain;
frost enough to kill vegetation; no
more.
Cotton is planted every seventh year
and returns each spring like the peach
trees; so we only knock down the cotton
stalks, pillow the ground well, and by the
middle of April we have cotton a foot
high. The yield averages a bale to the
acre. Our market Is the City Of Mexico
and Rubio's factory in Queretaro.
We have to haul eight hundred miles
to the city at the cost of three or four
cents a pound, SC that sixteen cents a
pound in specie is what we realize on an
average.
The Laguna or Nazos county you
must have heard of while in Mexico. /
think General Hardeman was here under
the auspices of Commodore Maury, so /
will not trouble yeu with an extended de-
scription. But it is the Nile of the con-
tinent. The soil is the a%lluvial deposits
of centuries of overflow, and the various
changes which time kas made in the
flow Of the river have left bodies of land,
large and small. beyond present over
flow, consequently dry and barren. Yet
dig your ssequia ditch and irrigate it
and you bring back the life of the rich
est Of soils. | watered my cotton field
in October, 1873, had no rain or irriga-
ton until the following September
eleven months), yet made a full crop
and did not suffer from the drouth. The
irrigating canals are in some cases
thirty to forty miles long and cost a
great deal of money. All lands, as yet,
are rented, and rents are very high-say
one-third of the crop.
AS to railroads, the route we want
land | speak as a Texan is from Laredo,
where the Texas international is to ter
inmate, to Mazatlan, which will pass
through this Laguna country. 1t is the
shortest transit across the continent, and
offers every possible facility for the con-
struction and success of railroad. An
iron mountain Of the best quality to be-
gin with, with rolling mills already es-
tablished in the rich and splendid city of
Durango-splendid pine timber in album
dance-all the productions of the earth,
wine, cotton, sugar-cane, wheat, corn,
and the precious metals, are all on the
direct line to-day, in abundance to pay
interest on cost at once, and the en-
HANGED value of property and increased
production, and add to the fact that
trains will never be stopped bysnow, ice,
or heat.
Sum these up aud you will see | am
writing to you about the real transit
across the continent-the one that in the
end will carry the box of tea and pack
age of silk in the shortest time from
Canton to Her Majesty's docks in Lon
don. There are wideawake people in
charge of this route. No foreigner will
get the concession. 1t will be entirely
Mexican, but to the outside world It
makes no difference who gets it. 1t will
probably not assume definite shape till
after our next presidential election in
this country, in 1876.