Excerpt from The Coast Country of Texas

To understand the circumstances which have until the present time kept the price of lands in the Coast Country at such a low fig ure, we must briefly review its history. We have seen within a de cade lands selling at equally low figures in the north and middle west. There great areas of hitherto unpopulated country were opened to settlement. Their agricultural possibilities were unknown. The short summers and long winters, with their late springs, drouths and early frosts were indeed matters of common knowledge. But be cause there has been a hereditary madness to pursue lines of emigra tion upon the same latitudes, men settled upon them until in a few years they had practically all been taken up. The course of emigra tion for centuries was westward, always westward.

It became a habit of thought with men to believe that as their fathers had wrested a livelihood from the soil during a few summer months and consumed during the long winters what they had earned during the brief period of sowing and harvest, so they should do like wise. And in spite of the rigors of a climate that preyed upon their health and denied them more than moderate rewards for industry, prejudice and ignorance were so firmly fixed that only a compara tively few of the more adventurous broke away from the vast army of emigration and set their faces toward the richer promise-land of the south. To-day these bid their friends come and share with them the prosperity they have found. They invite them to come not to a wil derness where the institutions of civilization must be freshly set up, but to a country old in its settlement, with all its social fabric organ ized, where the church and schoolhouse have for two generations been the beacons of enlightenment; where hospitable homes have long opened their doors where the carriers of commerce draw them near to the markets of the world where the willing and industrious settler of modest means has before him the sure promise of comfortable afflu ence; where congenial sunshine and pure gulf breezes conspire to lengthen life, and prosperous cities and thriving towns afford all the advantages and amenities of life.

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