sive sea coast indented by the mouths of the Sabine
river and lake, the Rio Naches, the Rio Trinidad, the Rio San Jacinto,
Galveston bay, the Rio Brazos, Matagorda bay, the Rio Colorado, the Rios
San Antonio and Guadalupe, Aransaso bay and the Rio Grande, besides
numerous smaller streams that drain her soil and almost cover it with an
interlacing network of water.

Texas presents to the traveller three distinct natural regions. Along
the shores of the gulf from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, a flat country
extends from thirty to one hundred miles in the interior, widening,
towards its centre on the Colorado, and gradually diminishing towards
the Nueces. The sandy wastes and lagunes of the coast give place, at
some distance in the interior, to a rich alluvial country, diversified
by skirts of timber, insulated groves, and open prairies. A large
portion of this part of Texas is described as being singularly free from
those large collections of stagnant water, which, combined with a
burning sun and prolific vegetation, create malaria in our southern
States.

Westward of this level skirt, begins the rolling region. The land
gradually swells in gentle undulations, "covered with fertile prairies
and valuable woodlands, enriched with springs and rivulets." Farther
westward still, these beautiful hills tower up into the steeps of the
_Sierra Madre_, that great chain of gigantic mountains, which, broken at
the junction of the Rio Grande with the Puerco, takes thence a
north-easterly course, and enters Texas near the source of the Nueces.
These elevations are of the third and fourth magnitude, and abound with
forests of pine, oak, cedar, and an extraordinary variety of shrubbery.
Wide vallies of alluvial soil, commonly susceptible of irrigation from
copious streams in the highlands, wind through the recesses of these
mountains and afford a delightful region for the purposes of
agriculture. The table lands beyond these ranges have been but little
explored, and still less is known of the northern region extending to
the 42 deg. of north latitude, as well as of that portion lying between the
Nueces and the Rio Grande. But such, in brief, is Texas from the gulf to
the mountains;--a country adapted alike to the planter, the grazier and
the farmer, while it offers to commerce a wide extent of sea coast whose
harbors may be made perfectly secure by the skill of modern science.[72]

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