Occasional rumors reached us in the years 1885 and 1886 about a drouth in Texas and consequent suffering, but they were so contradictory and widely at variance that the public took little or no heed of them. During the year of 1886 the Reverend John Brown, a North Presbyterian minister, located at Albany, Shackelford County, Texas, began making appeals by circular and oral address to the people of the Northern States, in which he asserted that there were a hundred thousand families in northwestern Texas who were utterly destitute and on the verge of starvation. He stated that since the close of the war a large number of poor families had been constantly crowding into Texas from the Southern States principally, induced thither by land agents and others, who gave glowing representations of the character of the soil for farming purposes. These poor people, by hard labor and industry, had been generally able to make a living and nothing more. The last fall they had planted wheat and other grain quite extensively, but the rains came not and everything perished; and in the following spring and summer, too, everything put into the ground was blasted by the hot winds, so that not a thing was raised for man or beast. For fifteen months no rain had fallen, and the condition of the people was pitiable and called aloud to the charitable throughout the land for relief. They must be carried through to the next summer or they would perish. At a meeting of the citizens of Albany, Texas, they decided that the task of relieving the sufferers was greater than the well-to-do people of the State were able to undertake, and that an appeal should be made to the good-hearted people of the North for immediate aid. The Governor of Texas also published an appeal to the people of the whole land, asking for food for these people. But as there was no concerned action, and so many denials of the stories of suffering, little or nothing in the way of relief work was accomplished for some time. Spasmodic attempts were made, and some food for man and beast was contributed, but not enough to relieve a hundredth part of the needy. The Reverend Doctor Brown went to the State Capital and endeavored to interest the Legislature in the matter, but there were seemingly so much misunderstanding and unbelief, and so many conflicting interests to reconcile, that he failed to receive any substantial assurances and left the place in disgust. When the citizens of Texas could not agree as to the necessities of their own people, it was not to be expected that the citizens of the country would take much interest in them, hence the relief movement languished from inanition.