Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-01-07
A LETTER FROM TEXAS.
MR.. EDITOR:

MR.. EDITOR:
Perhaps the readers of the MONITOR
will feel sufficient interest in the
''Sunny South" to give my hasty
sketch a perusal. We left Barton at
an early hour in the morning and
after ninety two hours ride, arrived
at this place. This is a city of per-
haps, 10000, composed of Whites,
MexicaDs, Negroes, Spaniards, and
almost every other nationality, not
forgetting a few full blood Yankees
who have pushed to the front in bust
ness ranks. The most consolidated
part of the city is along by the beach
and perhaps one third of a mile wide,
and only a few feet above the water
in the bay-Gulf of Mexico. Then as
as you go farther back from the wa
ter the land rises some thirty or forty
feet, then stretches away for hun
dreds of miles without hill as high
as house top, and no timber Of any
size.
This whole country has once been
the bed of the ocean, sea-shells are
everywhere in the soil; in boring for
water these shells have been brought
up from many feet down. One of the
great Inconvenience here, particu-
larly to northern people, is the lack
of good water. The City has a sys-
tenn of water works where the water
is forced some fifteen miles in pipe
and then into standing pipe 100 TT.
high and Is #. in diameter. This wa
ter is very poor although some use it,
but the best water in this region is
rain, caught in cisterns. They have
bored in several places here for water
and use wind mills for pumping, but
they have to bore down SO near that
warm place that the water is SO warm
and SO strongly impregnated with
birthstone, that it is not fit to use in
the house. Some of these wells over
flow and give constant stream. One
of them is in the lower part of the
City, and is bored 1855 #. below the
water level in the harbor. But, Oh
my! you can smell it before you
get to it. I think it would burn if you
were to touch a match to it.
In regard to buildings, there is one
feature that northern man will
quickly notice, and that is the ex-
IRENE of poverty on one hand, and
splendor and affluence on the other.
There are some fine houses here that
are finished inside as nice and hand
some as any piano case. Then there
are scores of poor Mexican families,
who live and raise families in little
huts that in Barton could not be sold
at even dime.
The climate Is all that one can reas
onably wish. This is Christmas and |
have been here over a month and
there has not been a day but we have
worn our summer clothes and had the
windows and doors wide open, with
no indications of frost. Oranges, lem
ons, figs, bananas, pomegranates
and other tropical fruits: vegetables
grow here all times in the year; some
of the gardeners have nice, large cab
bages, beets, tomatoes, &C., and are
just planting other parts of their fields.
Two or three crops can be raised each
year, but only one crop of cotton,
which has mostly been gathered, and
they are having it ginned and pressed
into bales of about 500 or 900 pounds,
some mills can only put up three or
four bales per day, but this mill, with
good dry cotton, will gin and press
500 pounds per hour. The proprietor
is Vermont yankee.
The geographical location of this
place is good for doing heavy COM
mercial business, but the harbor is too
shallow to admit large vessels with
out heavy outlay to deepen the wa
ter. This they began to do a few
years back, and the work was pro-
crossing finely when the blasting
fumes and smoke from Cleveland's
free trade engine was waited over the
country, and behold, what a change
has come over the the spirit of our
dreams!
Since writing the above we have
had cold wave and frost which will
probably do vast amount of damage
to the fruit and crops. J. G. PAGE.
Corpus Christi, Teras.
Prior to the winter of 1923 every