The South at Work by Brown William Garrott;Baker Bruce E.;

Author:Brown, William Garrott;Baker, Bruce E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Published in the Boston Evening Transcript, May 7, 1904.

On the Vast Plains of Southern Texas

A Ranch That Is as Large as the State of Rhode Island—The Scene of Great Historical Events—Where Thousands of Cattle Roam—The Great Need of Moisture and the Wells Which Are Supplying It—Advancing Irrigation—The Boomers at Work

[Special Correspondence of the Transcript]

Santa Gertrudes Ranch, Texas. April 16.

I am afraid that if I describe my immediate environment no one will believe that this is written from a real ranch at all. The old mesquites on the lawn in front of me are big enough to be mistaken for willows. The lawn itself is turfed like the tennis courts at Newport and Longwood. The walk, whose curves are in fact the brand of the ranch, is grabbled as cleanly as though it were the pride of Mr. and Mrs. Suburbs. There are flowering cacti, and near the fence a row of century plants. The outhouses, stores and stables are as neat as those of an army post. The great ranch house itself, visible miles away from the slightest elevation, might be a country mansion anywhere south of the Potomac, or a nunnery, or a Roman Catholic seminary. So might the coyote, trotting along on the other side of a deep arroyo, be a yellow dog.

Nevertheless, it is twenty miles or more to the other arroyo (or dry creek), which is the dividing line between Santa Gertrudes and Laureles (the ranch of the Laurels) whence my companion and I were driven this morning; and from Laureles to Corpus Christi is twenty-three miles.1 Saturday, when we go the other way to the terminus of the Aransas Pass Railroad at Alice, we must drive some twelve or fourteen miles before we shall leave the last of the Santa Gertrudes’ pastures behind us.2 Bear in mind that a pasture in this part of the world is anywhere from one to ten or fifteen miles square. One way, it is sixty miles across Santa Gertrudes. The whole property is about one million acres, and that is almost exactly the area of Rhode Island.3 These dimensions strike one as rather large until a gentleman from Mexico, here to purchase bulls, told me of a ranch across the Rio Grande which comprises from three to four million acres, which comes dangerously near to being as big as Massachusetts. Perhaps another set of figures will better convey a notion of the extent and character of the little kingdom whose capital is this village of stables, barns, store houses, cottages and ranchhouse. Several years ago, a reward of two and one-half cents was offered by the manger for every rattlesnake’s rattle taken on the ranch. Within less than two years, twenty-seven thousand rattles were brought in by the Mexican cowboys.

The all-day ride from Houston to Corpus the other day brought us from the Texas of the last two or three years—the Texas of oil wells and cotton fields and sugar fields and rice fields, into the Texas of the stirring springtide, sixty-seven years ago when Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande.

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