The Central Christian Church, one of the most attractive of the many handsome houses of worship in San Antonio he had, about a dozen years ago. "I once owned 540 acres of land near there," he said. "A friend of mine offered me the 540acre piece at ten cents an acre. I had been saving my pay and had quite a lot of ready money, seventy-five or eighty dollars, I guess it was. I just thought I would take a chance with fifty of it, so I bought the land. Afterwards I got to thinking about the matter, and I said to myself, 'What a chump you were to throw away that fifty! You might just as well have changed it into Mex. and tossed it into the river.' And do you know I actually renigged - made the fellow call the trade off and give me back my money. To-day that land is worth $40 an acre." He turned away, grinning mourn On the Mexican Border Americans are pouring into Mexico by thousands, and on the other hand there is a small but steady and increasing influx of Mexicans into Texas. San Antonio marks the limit of the northern migration of most of them. It is hard to determine whether the Mexican population of San Antonio is increasing or declining. One observer says one thing; another, the contrary. It is generally agreed that they are far better laborers than the negroes. They do most of the common labor of San Antonio, and a large part of the trades' work is in their hands. Some of them, of the higher types, are among the best and most distinguished citizens of San Antonio. These, I take it, are of the Spanish strain, whereas the rank and file of the Mexicans in Texas are unmistakably of Indian derivation, or mainly so. They are not classed as whites, but are a valuable and generally peaceful element of the citizenship. Brownsville, the river-town that is the centre of the new agricultural development along the Rio Grande, has a population of about fifteen hundred whites and forty-five hundred Mexicans. It is waking to new life after a sleep of nearly half a cen valley, is richer than even the historic Valley of the Nile. Railroad-builders are hurrying new lines to completion, extending old ones, and advertising to the North the wonderful opportunities for the making of new fortunes out of the soil so long unused and deemed of little or no value. A large and increasing stream of settlers from Northern and Eastern States pours into the Rio Grande Valley, and it is sure soon to become one of the richest farming-sections of the Union. Station of the Southern Pacific at San Antonio, a type of railway architecture characteristic of the Southwest tury. In the later years of the Civil War, when federal warships had blockaded all the Southern ports, nearly all of the cotton that the South was able to export was sent out through Brownsville. It went across the river in bond and was shipped as Mexican property. In those days Brownsville, on both sides of the river, had a flourishing population of full fifty thousand. When commerce of the South returned to its former channels the old place fell asleep, to be awakened only recently, when soil investigators discovered that the country thereabout, and all up and down the Rio Grande The development of the river-counties has been retarded by bad government. Ring rule, so easily perfected and perpetuated where there is but one party of any strength, has cursed this region for many long years, but there are indications that the new-comers will shortly make an end of it. It is no longer fashionable to import voters from the Mexican side of the river to carry a doubtful township, and the old bosses there begin to grow pessimistic concerning the country's future, even as do the old bosses in the larger cities of Texas, contemplating the growth of the sentiment for commission government. It is related of Judge Wells, the boss of the dominant ring in Cameron County, that he met State Senator Turner, of Corpus Christi, on a train, shortly after the passage of a new State game law. The judge inquired, in a semi-facetious humor, whether in the opinion of Senator Turner the new law would apply to Cameron County, commonly and humorously known as the Free State of Cameron. The senator replied that if the new law applied to Cameron County it would be the first law ever passed by the Texas Legislature that most energetic railroad-builder the country has seen since James J. Hill laid his rails from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, is active in developing the Rio Grande region. His Gulf Coast line, which is to have great terminals in Houston and Galveston and ultimately will reach up to San Antonio, will populate and market the products of a fruitful region as large as Ohio. The completion of the Inter-Coastal canal, for the first section of which, between Brownsville and Corpus Christi, an appropriation is A San Antonio residence, built of Texas soapstone, that cuts easily when first taken out, but hardens with age and exposure to the weather did so apply. And there was more of truth than jest in that answer. One of the strong, clean, keen young men of the kind that is bringing modern ideas into the Rio Grande country, and promoting immigration there, is Mr. J. W. Canada, of San Antonio, who is interested in a score of country weeklies in southwest Texas, and publishes, among others, a Brownsville paper. Activity of Northern Capitalists Mr. B. F. Yoakum, the head of the Rock Island-Frisco group of railroads, and the made in the new rivers and harbors bill and which can be completed under five million dollars, will permit the building-up of a barge traffic from the Mexican border to all the great cities on the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri rivers. Coal can then be sent without transshipment from Pittsburg in Texas City, the new town which the giants of the United States Steel Company are building on the mainland opposite Galveston, and other freight can be taken north from the fields of the Rio Grande region in the same inexpensive way. There are very many indications that the great capitalists |