The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-08-19
Agricultural Department
CONDUCTED BY FULTON s. WHITE.

banks of the ditches, give them no cul-
 tivation whatever. yet they produce great
 crops, and the Mexicans peddle them and live on the proceeds The soil is as rich
 and productive as the Nile.
 We hear it said of this country that
 it is only a question of water. Why there | is great quantities of water going to
 waste, enough to produce thousands of
 tons of crops, and no intelligent effort
 made to save 1t. Now a company is
 building a great irrigation plant, and
 soon ditches will be made storage canals
 provided and all this water turned to
 good use. What could we expect of a
 country inhabited by lot of filthy Mex | jeans, half-breeds, Indians and negroes,
 with only few whites mixed in as spec
 ulators. When the white man posses
 that country, as he is now doing, things
 will change rapidly for the better. AL
 ready the white man is foremost and arr
 engagements are being made to turn this
 country to growing truck for shipment. | Nine hundred pounds of Bermuda onion seed have so far been sold, and orders
 still coming in. Four hundred acres, at least, will be planted to onions near
 Brownsville, besides a large acreage of cantaloupes, cabbage, eauliflower, car
 rots, beets and other crops will be plant
 ed. Perhaps at least 1000 acres will be |
 can be grown here in the winter. As l wrote before, farming in this sec- | tion can be made perpetual motion, but
 it is the winter crops that are to pay best,
 and large line can be grown here in the
 winter.
 Game.
 | The rice fields are full of birds-pIover, rice birds, water fowl and soon the wild geese and ducks will fly here by the
 thousands. The woods are full of quail, deer, turkey and rabbits, while the waters are full of fine fish. The Corpus bay is perhaps the best place for fishing This
 Is certainly country full of interest.
 Matamorris.
 | Six of Us Americans went over and put
 in part of Sunday in this interesting old Mexican city. It is a city of desolation and poverty. During the war between the states Matamorris was in her glory, as most of the Texas cotton crop had to | pass through her markets, this being for | time the only outlet the south had | to get her cotton through. Then the 1 city had a population of 750O0 people but | these have dwindled down until now
 2O00 Is the estimated population, made 1 up of poor, miserable, dirty, half-clad
 Mexicans. During the days of her glory
 large brick blocks were erected, but most | of these are much the worse for wear 1 and tear of old time. Even the rocks of | which the sidewalks are laid have great holes worn nearly through by the tread | of man and time. These poor people l have made but little progress in any | lines They work cheap and are con tented with very little of the things of | this life. What they expect in the future 1t is hard to say. Their methods of doing | things are primitive indeed, the same as l practiced for past centuries They carry their dairy products to markets on bur- rows. A can of milk one in each end Of a sack, thrown across a burrow, and
 to market they go. They yet haul water | in barrels rolled on the ground-hitch a
 burrow to it and go ahead. I believe I wrote before of their method of dispos- Ing of their dead. The poor who are
 unable to defray funeral expenses are
 thrown in the bone yard pit of the dead One would have to travel in Mexico to fully realize the true condition The poor old wizen-faced women beggars that one meets leaves a lasting impression There seems to be a great many old people, and very old, too, they seem to be. I could
 write pages of this interesting country,
 but must stop for this time
 Popularity of the Age-HeraId. | l was surprised to find in Texas that | so many of our Alabama readers were in | the habit of sending to their kin and | friends In Texas my letters and clippings | concerning what I had to say of this country. l found several who had re- ceived my letter of last May on this
 same trip and they were all well pleased. I found one man at Corpus | Cristi who said that his sister. who lives
 in Marion, Ala. was sending him all my | letters in the Age-Herald. This suggests | a thought, which is, why not our Alabama readers send their friends the Weekly Age-Herald regularly. It will cost but | very little more to send the paper for a | year than 1t does to send the clippings | Write them and tell them tlfAt I am writing regularly for the paper and that | certainly will try and make all my | letters of interest, and by reading these | letters they can keep posted as to not only what is transpiring in Texas, but l also all about their old home state, Alabama.
 | I am preparing to spend September in | Investigating crops as grown on the | Pacific-California and other states-and | hope to interest our readers from this