Little by little, and then largely and yet more largely, the warriors of San Jacinto reached out and began to claim lands for themselves--leagues and uncounted leagues of land, which had, however, no market value.

Well within the memory of the present generation large tracts of good land were bought in Texas for six cents an acre; some was bought for half that price in a time not much earlier.

Today much of that land is producing wealth; but land then was worthless--and so were cows.
This civilization of the Southwest, of the new Republic of Texas, may be regarded as the first enduring American result of contact with the Spanish industry.

The men who won Texas came mostly from Kentucky and Tennessee or southern Ohio, and the first colonizer of Texas was a Virginian, Stephen Fuller Austin.

They came along the old Natchez Trace from Nashville to the Mississippi River--that highway which has so much history of its own.