Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/11



CHAPTER I.

SOUTH-WESTERN LOUISIANA AND EASTERN TEXAS.

Nacogdoches.—In this town of 500 inhabitants, we found there was no flour. At San Augustine we had inquired in vain at all the stores for refined sugar. Not satisfied with some blankets that were shown us, we were politely recommended by the shopkeeper to try other stores. At each of the other stores we were told they had none: the only blankets in town we should find at 's, naming the one we had just quitted. The same thing occurred with several other articles.

Houston County.—This day's ride and the next were through a very poor country, clay or sand soil, bearing short oaks and black-jack. We passed one small meadow, or prairie, covered with coarse grass. Deserted plantations appeared again in greater numbers than the occupied. One farm, near which we stopped, was worked by eight field hands. The crop had been fifty bales; small, owing to a dry season. The corn had been exceedingly poor. The hands, we noticed, came in from the fields after eight o'clock.

The deserted houses, B. said, were built before the date of Texan Independence. After Annexation the owners had