Messrs. Albert Brisbane of New York, and Victor Considerant of France, got to our house a few days ago, coming into Texas at Preston, and thence to our bend. They are on their way through northern Texas for the purpose of selecting some several thousand acres of land, with a view to the settlement of a French Colony. They are well pleased with what they have seen. They remained with us a day and night, and we sent a guide with them on their way to Gainesville. They are fine looking, intelligent gentlemen. Their purpose, when they left our house, was, to examine the Cross Timbers country, and on to Fort Worth.[10] Having reached Texas, Considerant immediately began to write his reactions. “I was expecting something wild and rude, coarse grasses and weeds of enormous height, etc.” However, he was astonished when he found a “superior richness” of the soil, wild oats, numerous tender grasses, large forests, and many prosperous, cultivated fields. Even the land which the Americans rejected as poor, rocky, and of thin soil, which they refused to cultivate, was exactly what the French needed to grow their vines. Grapevines grown on such soil were of “lower growth and much less run to wood and leaf, than the kind which overspreads the bottoms. The latter reaches forth on all sides its gigantic branches and climbs to the summit of the largest trees, balancing between them its clusters of black grapes.”[11] Near Dallas, at the junction of the forks of the Trinity river, Considerant and Brisbane met M. Gouhenans, chief of the first Icarian vanguard, who gathered these wild grapes and made wine out of them, which he sold for a dollar a bottle.[12] The people classified the soil into four kinds: black sandy, red sandy, mulatto, and black sticky. Considerant explains that the latter is difficult to work and is more appropriate for cotton than for anything else. The reports he gave concerning the crops were very enthusiastic. For instance, he mentions that he saw beets grown in unfertilized land that measured two feet six inches in circumference, and tomatoes that put forth shoots from ten to twelve feet in length.[13] At Fort Worth and Fort Graham gardens which the soldiers had prepared were very prolific. Within a few months after they were planted, there were beans of all kinds, green peas, melons, sweet potatoes, and twenty other plants of the kitchen garden, which were succeeding perfectly.[14] All of this was accomplished without manuring the land, an absolute necessity in Europe. There was no weeding necessary and only one or two plowings were required. The garden in Fort Worth, so he reported, had been planted and no further attention given to it, yet it was in very neat order.[15]