Texas--once the refuge of men seeking exemption from the restraints which criminal law imposes--even Texas prospered, and under the genial influence of prosperity became respectable. Her population has risen in eight years from eight hundred thousand to two million. Much of her vast area[6] still lies untilled; but much of it has been reclaimed for the use of man. Her railways still traverse dreary forests, and great, unpeopled plains; but they also carry the traveller past many smiling villages, and many thriving cities where a prosperous commerce is maintained, where schools and churches abound. They reveal to him well-appointed farm-buildings; fields rich with bountiful crops; jungles where the peach, the orange, the banana, the pomegranate grow luxuriantly under the fostering heat of a semi-tropical sun; vast areas roamed over by myriads of slight, active-looking Texan cattle, the rearing of which yields wealth to the people. In many of the Texan cities two contrasted types of civilization--the old Mexican and the young American--live peaceably side by side. The palace-car meets the ox-team and the donkey with his panniers. The blanketed Indian, the Mexican in poncho and sombrero, the American in his faultless broadcloth, mingle harmoniously in the streets. Handsome mansions such as abound in the suburbs of eastern cities are near neighbours to antique Mexican dwellings, built of adobe, with loopholed battlements, and walls which show still the bullet-marks of forgotten strifes. As the enormous mineral resources of the Rocky Mountains became more certainly ascertained, crowds were attracted in hope of sudden wealth, and the States which include the richer portions of the range became the home of a large population. In the remote north-west wheat crops of astonishing opulence rewarded the simple husbandry of the settler. The law that cultivated plants are most productive near the northern limit of their growth was illustrated in the happy experience of Dakotah and northern Minnesota, where the growing of wheat has now become one of the most lucrative of industrial occupations. The railways of those States are being extended with all possible rapidity, and each extension is followed by a fresh influx of settlers. Farmers of experience from the older and less productive States are drawn to the north-west by the unrivalled advantages which soil and climate present. During the year 1878 not less than five million acres of land were purchased in northern Minnesota for immediate cultivation.[7] * * * * *