Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1885 — The Texan Eden. [ARTICLE]

The Texan Eden.

Traveling on the old McKenzie trail, on the third day we stopped to lunch and water our horses at the flow-out of the Blanco (or White) River, which flows through Blanco Canyon for forty miles, and which, it should be remembered, is only the fresh water fork of the Brazos. We had halted at the gate of the Texas Eden, where the painter would have stood entranced, pencil and brush being all too tame to put in lines or color the grand landscape where earth and brush, and hill and water, and cloud and sky, mingled into an indescribable picture. The sun was shining brightly adown the valley and upon the mountain bluffs, looming up hundreds of feet above the limpid stream flowing through the center of the canyon. The grass, which was tinged with the autumn brown in the open valley, appeared in great plats and patches in the hollows under the shadows of the canyon bluffs. Myriads of flowers, blooming and witnered, cropped out from the hillock, rockbase, and open prairie. Rare among them was the Texas star, a five-leaved flower, which heads to the north—a veritable flower-magnet. Rare it is, and growing still rarer as the rude hoof of horse and cattle continue to trample it out. The hardy flowering cactus is everywhere. Nature made a big effort in the spreading mouth of Blanco Canyon. This canyon is about forty-five miles long, and widens from its source like a wedge, until at its mouth there is fifteen or sixteen miles of plain and brush and rich grasses. As we cross the crystal stream flowing over limestone and gypsum beds, we follow the trail up over the bluff, where the fossil sea-shells crop out on every bare surface, and there, stretching away to the far distance, we see, and for the first time realize, the extent of the ranges known as the “Staked Plains.” In the wonderfully clear sunlight we see herds of cattle feeding, and, away toward a hill range, some startled antelopes are scampering off in alarm. This trail up the steep bluff over which we have just come has been beaten into a smooth path by the countless feet of buffalo and antelope and Indians for centuries. Here, where the savage in his primitive brutality once hunted the noble game, we now see cattle feeding undisturbed in the great range of the Kentucky Cattle Raising Company. The buffalo have departed, but in their place have come short-horn cattle, showing the peaceful marriage between the wild cattle of the West and the thoroughbreds of the blue-grass of Kentucky.— Louisville Courier-Journal.