Texas does not possess any range of mountains with the exception that, one hundred miles north from San Antonio de Bejar, the San Seba hills rise and extend themselves in a line parallel with the Rocky Mountains, as high as the green peaks in the neighbourhood of Santa Fe.  The San Seba hills contain several mines of silver, and I doubt not that this metal is very common along the whole range east of the Rio Grande.  Gold is also found in great quantities in all the streams tributary to the Rio Puerco, but I have never heard of precious stones of any kind.

Excepting the woody districts which border Louisiana and Arkansas, the greater proportion of Texas is prairie; a belt of land commences upon one of the bends of the river Brasos, spreads northward to the very shores of the Red River, and is called by the Americans “The Cross Timbers;” its natural productions, together with those of the prairies, are similar to those of the Shoshone country.  Before the year 1836, and I dare say even now, the great western prairies of Texas contained more animals and a greater variety of species than any other part of the world within the same number of square miles; and I believe that the Sunderbunds in Bengal do not contain monsters more hideous and terrible than are to be found in the eastern portion of Texas, over which nature appears to have spread a malediction.  The myriads of snakes of all kinds, the unaccountable diversity of venomous reptiles, and even the deadly tarantula spider or “vampire” of the prairies, are trifles, compared with the awful inhabitants of the eastern bogs swamps, and muddy rivers.  The former are really dangerous only during two or three months of the year, and, moreover, a considerable portion of the trails are free from their presence, owing to the fires which break out in the dry grass almost every fall.  There the traveller knows what he has to fear, and, independent of the instinct and knowledge of his horse, he himself keeps an anxious look-out, watching the undulating motion of the grass, and ever ready with his rifle or pistols in the event of his being confronted with bears, pumas, or any other ferocious quadruped.  If he is attacked, he can fight, and only few accidents have ever happened in these encounters, as these animals always wander alone with the exception of the wolf, from whom, however, there is but little to fear, as, in the prairies, this animal is always glutted with food and timid at the approach of man.

As the prairie wolf is entirely different from the European, I will borrow a page of Ross Cox, who, having had an opportunity of meeting it, gives a very good description of its manners and ways of living.  Yet as this traveller does not describe the animal itself, I will add, that the general colour of the prairie wolf is grey mixed with black, the ears are round and straight, it is about forty inches long, and possesses the sagacity and cunning of the fox.

“The prairie wolves,” says Cox, “are much smaller than those which inhabit the woods.  They generally travel together in numbers, and a solitary one is seldom met with.  Two or three of us have often pursued from fifty to one hundred, driving them before us as quickly as our horses could charge.