The country, where these streams rise, is from six to eight hundred feet above the level of the sea, and only a hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty miles from the ocean. The result is a clear, dry, salubrious atmosphere. So much so that if standing on a mountain top, twelve miles west of San Antonio, in a clear day, one's vision can penetrate westward two hundred and fifty miles across the Rio Grande to the mountains of Monterey, in Mexico.
In this closing chapter of our book, we have thought that a brief outline sketch of the topography, climate, soil, and productions of Texas might not be uninteresting to the reader. And in order to this, we shall speak first of its grand geographical divisions, as characterized and distinguished by peculiar products. And first we will speak of Northern Texas, which is distinguished for being the wheat region of the State. The wheat region proper embraces about thirty counties, of which Dallas County may be regarded as the center, containing about thirty thousand square miles. The rich black soil is especially adapted to wheat-growing. It yields in ordinary seasons, and under the imperfect cultivation that it gets as yet, twenty-one bushels to the acre as a mean average; and in occasional instances the quality is so superior as to weigh seventy-two pounds to the bushel. After the first year of the late civil war the supply of flour was principally from Northern Texas. Its quality was superior to any flour we have ever seen in Illinois. The soil is equally favorable to all the other cereals that are produced in the Northern States. The soil on and near the Upper Brazos is reddish, and is now considered the best for wheat on account of the solution of gypsum that it holds, and which is regarded as an important quality in a wheat-producing soil. It wears better and longer than other soils.
The southeastern and southern-central counties are the best cotton-growing region, the most fertile of all lands in the State, and for any thing, like an equal area, the best for cotton that can be found in the world. The cotton counties proper constitute about one-quarter of the State. The region also includes several millions of acres of sugar lands, often quite equal to those of Louisiana. Sugar has been produced in considerable quantities near the mouths of the Brazos and Colorado Rivers.