But these southern and northern
riflemen--ruthless and savage, yet strangely
statesmanlike--though they might betimes drive away the owners of
the herds, troubled little about the herds themselves. There was
a certain fascination to these rude strangers in the slow and
easeful civilization of Old Spain which they encountered in the
land below them. 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.
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