The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959 Page: 72

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

rado, as the conditions are of importance to the founding of
settlements. I follow your request gladly to write you about the
conditions of the grant because I have recently received several
communications which have made me more favorably inclined to
the area in a number of important respects.
In my book about Texas5 I expressed the opinion that the
Society's grant consisted mostly of hilly country and plateaus
which comprised some lands suitable for settling especially along
the rivers and creeks crossing the region, but that in fertility
it was definitely below that of the region between the Guadalupe
and San Antonio River. This is still, in the main, my convic-
tion. The Society's grant is for that reason, however, not to be
considered worthless for German settlement. Some of the earlier
expressed doubts and fears have been proved ungrounded by the
experience of recent times and several disadvantageous conditions
have turned out more favorably.
Since my departure from Texas several settlements have been
founded between New Braunfels and Fredericksburg so that
Fredericksburg is no longer an isolated settlement, and at the
same time the northern boundary of these settlements has been
pushed nearer the southern boundary of the Society's lands. The
former inaccessibility of the grant has been in part removed or
at least lessened by the opening of several new roads, especially
that from Austin to Fredericksburg. The fact that the road from
Lavaca Bay via New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and through the
grant to Paso del Norte on the Rio Grande has proved itself as
ene of the most direct and recommendable routes for emigrants
to California, can not fail to increase the value and importance
of the Society's grant and assures the first settlers in the grant an
easy and profitable use of the products which they raise above
their own needs.
Contrary to my expectation, Fredericksburg has been able to
carry on without the support of the Society, and in several suc-
cessive years the people have produced good corn crops there.
This lends greater hope than before to the assumption that corn
can be produced in the grant. Many stretches of land with at
5This is a reference to Roemer's Texas, published in Bonn in 1847. This book
was translated by Oswald Mueller and published by the Standard Printing Com-
pany, San Antonio, Texas, in 1935.