Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Dreams of a Sheep Ranch Sheep Raising Herding Sheep Something About Texas Land Grants The "Texas Fever" Why I wanted to Go Hunting in Texas Father Spys the Land Our Plantation Father Comes Home The Bigness of Texas Where We were Going What I Hoped to Do Cattle Driving How We Set Out A Laborious Journey Comanche Indians Father to the Rescue Arrival at Fort Towson Preparing for a Storm A Dry "Norther" Two Kinds of Northers How Turkeys Kill Snakes Deer and Rattlesnakes A Corral of Wagons On the Trail Again Mesquite A Texas Sheep Ranch Profits from Sheep Father's Land Claim Spanish Measurements The Chaparral Cock Night on the Trinity Standing Guard A Turkey Buzzard Plans for Building a House The Cook Shanty A Storm of Rain A Day of Discomfort Thinking of the Old Home Waiting for the Sun Too Much Water The Stream Rising Trying to Save the Stock The Animals Stampeded Saving Our Own Lives A Raging Torrent A Time of Disaster The Flood Subsiding A Jack Rabbit Reparing Damages Rounding up the Stock FAfter the Flood Waiting for Father Recovering Our Goods Setting to Work Sawing Out Lumber In the Saw Pit Wild Cattle A Disagreeable Intruder Odd Hunting A Supply of Fresh Meat "Jerking" Beef Searching for the Cattle Our New Home Planting and Building Bar-O Ranch An Odd Cart The Visitors Zeba's Curiosity Possible Treachery Suspicious Behavior Gyp's Fight With a Cougar In a Dangerous Position Hunting Wild Hogs Treed by Peccaries Gyp's Obedience My Carelessness Vicious Little Animals Father Comes to the Rescue Increase in my Flock Unrest of the Indians Texas Joins the Union War with Mexico Selling Wool Peace on the Trinity My Dream Fulfilled

Philip of Texas - James Otis




Mesquite

During the day we had been traveling over rolling land, which was covered with rich grass and looked not unlike what I have heard about the ocean, for we climbed over billow after billow and saw the same sea of undulating green stretched out before us, with here and there a small clump of oak or pecan trees, or thickets of mesquite.

[Illustration] from Philip of Texas by James Otis

Mesquite, of which there is so much in Texas, sometimes grows to the height of thirty or forty feet; but as a rule it is found as bushes no more than five or six feet high. It bears a pod something like a bean, which, before ripening is soft and exceedingly sweet, and so very pleasant to the taste that white people as well as Indians gather it as fruit. The wood of the mesquite, which may be found reasonably large in size, and which is of a brown or red color when polished, but exceedingly hard to work, is valuable for the underpinnings of houses, for fence posts, and even for furniture.

The next morning after we had crossed the Texas line we came upon the very thing in which I had the greatest interest, a sheep ranch, and I urged father to halt there for an hour or more that I might see how the animals were cared for here in this country, as compared with our manner of feeding and housing them in Mississippi.