known as the head-quarters of the Texan
Germans. Timely aid came from the Verein,
and this first settlement was a success.
Prince Solms of Braunfels stayed with it,
playing the prince among log cabins in a
style dear to small potentates, till he was
in the course of a twelvemonth laughed out
of the colony. An abler man, Herr von
Mensebach, succeeded him, and upon Herr
von Mensebach there followed Herr von
Spies, in whose time the Verein was bought
out by a new company at Bieberich. The
agent of the new company in Texas was Mr.
Martin, whom Mr. Spies crippled with
litigation. In eighteen 'fifty-five, one of the
gentlemen of whom Prince Solms made his
unlucky purchase had his eye upon another
speculation with the German colonisers, and
was offering to scale both claims, and secure
for himself the residue. We have no later
intelligence upon these matters, which do
not affect in any way the rights of the
established settlers, but concern only new comers
who have yet their ground to buy.

The first band of emigrants, then, founded
New Braunfels, and prospered. It was in
the next year followed by another. More
than two thousand families joined the
association in the year eighteen hundred and
forty-five, and the capital left to the Verein,
after loss by speculation, was quite insufficient
for its purpose. The two thousand
families, numbering five thousand two
hundred souls, sailed from Germany in autumn,
and were landed in the winter and early
spring upon the flat coast of the Gulf of
Mexico. Annexation had then taken place,
and the American war was beginning. The
army had stripped the country of provisions,
and of means of travel. The Verein had
foreseen nothing of this, had provided neither
food nor shelter. A terrible catastrophe was
the result. Burrowing in sand-hills, or under
such huts and tents as they could raise, the
poor creatures perished like sheep, sustaining
life upon what little beef could be found,
many lingering until summer bred among
them pestilence, by which they died. Some
dragged their slow way on foot towards New
Braunfels, where they arrived in droves,
haggard and almost dying, many having lost
family love and fellow feeling in the bitterness
of their own bodily and mental suffering.
Children whose parents had died were among
those who came; and the German pastor of
New Braunfels found them starving on the
river-bank. He could not bear the sight;
and, with a brave heart, though he had no
means of his own, collected sixty of them,
took what he could find belonging to them,
went to work with them on a farm, trusting
in God's help, and gathered them into a rough
homestead three miles out of New Braunfels,
now known as the Orphan Asylum at
Neuwied. The good pastor and his wife went
to work with the forlorn children in the
fields, and continued to raise as much as
would keep all alive. The greater number
have grown strong, and, living to see better
times, have passed from under the good
Samaritan's roof to obtain livelihoods by
independent labour. When Mr. Olmsted passed
that way, eighteen were with the pastor still,
all calling him papa.

This gentleman has obtained from the
legislature a grant of a university at Braunfels,
where he is at present sole professor, and
gives classical education to some of the sons
of emigrants. His hands are horny, and his
much-patched dress resembles that of a day
labourer; but he passed in Europe for a
cultivated gentleman, and he could not have
proved his claim to the name better at the
court of any serene Dummkopf-Affenkragen
than it has been proved among the Texan
settlers.

Since the events of eighteen 'forty-eight,
not a few Germans of high character and
standing have gone to the New World in
search of independence. Among the Germans
in Texas you may hear Beethoven's music,
see copies of Raffaelle's Madonnas on the
log cabin walls, and hear Tacitus quoted by
men following the plough. These colonists
live among slave-owners, keeping no slaves.
They have less wealth than their neighbours,
but more civilisation. The contrast we shall
show is not formed by a citation of extreme
cases.

There are in Texas many families of squatters
who are well content to spend in the
midst of hogs a life that is entirely cheap
and empty. Such a family has a farm and a
negro. The planter raises only corn and
hogs. The negro does the farm-work and
the house-work too. The women of the
family do nothing. Except a few days' work
once a lifetime, when logs are piled into a
place of residence, the owner of the negro
does nothing. Corn and bacon sold to travellers
furnish the means of buying coffee and
tobacco. Nature and the negro does the
rest.

Again, a young man may be master of a
grazier's farm, one hundred acres of the
prairie and woodland, and a large herd of
cattle. Such a settler told our travellers that
"any man who had been brought up in Texas
could live as well as he wanted to, without
working more than one month in the year.
For about a month in the year he had to work
hard, driving his cattle into the pen, and
roping and marking the calves. This was
always done in a kind of frolic in the spring
—the neighbouring herdsmen assisting each
other. During the rest of the year he hadn't
anything to do. When he felt like it he got
on to a horse and rode around, and looked
after his cattle; but that wasn't work," he
said, " 'twas only play." This man could live
"as well as he wanted to," that is to say, as
well as his neighbours, without any sign of
refinement in his dwelling, without a latch
to his door—with the sky visible through the