But further.  There are some things one can argue against with temper, and submit to, if overruled, without mortification.  There are other things that seem to affect one’s consciousness of being a sensible man, and to imply a disposition to impose upon his common sense.  And of this class of topics, or pretences, I have never heard of any thing, and I cannot conceive of any thing, more ridiculous in itself, more absurd, and more affrontive to all sober judgment, than the cry that we are getting indemnity by the acquisition of New Mexico and California.  I hold they are not worth a dollar; and we pay for them vast sums of money!  We have expended, as everybody knows, large treasures in the prosecution of the war; and now what is to constitute this indemnity?  What do gentlemen mean by it?  Let us see a little how this stands.  We get a country; we get, in the first instance, a cession, or an acknowledgment of boundary, (I care not which way you state it,) of the country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande.  What this country is appears from a publication made by a gentleman in the other house.[6] He speaks of the country in the following manner:—­

“The country from the Nueces to the valley of the Rio Grande is poor, sterile, sandy, and barren, with not a single tree of any size or value on our whole route.  The only tree which we saw was the musquit-tree, and very few of these.  The musquit is a small tree, resembling an old and decayed peach-tree.  The whole country may be truly called a perfect waste, uninhabited and uninhabitable.  There is not a drop of running water between the two rivers, except in the two small streams of San Salvador and Santa Gertrudis, and these only contain water in the rainy season.  Neither of them had running water when we passed them.  The chaparral commences within forty or fifty miles of the Rio Grande.  This is poor, rocky, and sandy; covered with prickly-pear, thistles, and almost every sticking thing, constituting a thick and perfectly impenetrable undergrowth.  For any useful or agricultural purpose, the country is not worth a sous.

“So far as we were able to form any opinion of this desert upon the other routes which had been travelled, its character, everywhere between the two rivers, is pretty much the same.  We learned that the route pursued by General Taylor, south of ours, was through a country similar to that through which we passed; as also was that travelled by General Wool from San Antonio to Presidio on the Rio Grande.  From what we both saw and heard, the whole command came to the conclusion which I have already expressed, that it was worth nothing.  I have no hesitation in saying, that I would not hazard the life of one valuable and useful man for every foot of land between San Patricio and the valley of the Rio Grande.  The country is not now, and can never be, of the slightest value.”

Major Gaines has been there lately.  He is a competent observer.  He is contradicted by nobody.  And so far as that country is concerned, I take it for granted that it is not worth a dollar.