George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army
George Gordon Meade, Ed.

It has been nearly two weeks since I have been able to write to you, but I trust the perfect quiet that prevails here will have been reported to you, and that you will not be uneasy on account of my silence. A few days after the date of my last letter (I think the fifteenth) I was ordered to proceed to Reinosa in one of the steamboats, for the purpose of making an examination of the river between this point and that place. We left here on the nineteenth and returned only a few days ago. The expedition was extremely agreeable. I prevailed upon Trudeau, and a young creole on General Smith's staff, by the name of Touchet, to accompany us, making a little party, and as the boat was a good one, clean and comfortable, we managed, when not engaged with our duties, to amuse ourselves in various ways.

We found the river perfectly navigable all the way to Reinosa, and cultivated for nearly the whole distance, one hundred and eighty miles by water. Indeed, on the Mexican side, it was one vast corn field from here more than three quarters of the distance. Upon the other side the land is cleared, and has been under cultivation, but a large portion has been abandoned owing to the frequent depredations and incursions of the Comanche Indians. The soil upon the river bank is exceedingly rich, said by many to equal in fertility the banks of the Mississippi, and to be capable of producing sugar and cotton equal to the production of that rich valley. It is without doubt the finest part of Texas (if it belong to Texas!) that I have seen and I anticipate its being densely populated, one day, when its resources are made available by the establishment of the means of transporting its products to the sea. It has one advantage over the Mississippi Valley, which is its perfect salubrity. No diseases are known here, but such as are incident to all climates; there are no local diseases, none originating from causes only found here. I have seen several persons who told me they came to the river with the chills and fever; which they had brought with them, recovered here, and have never since been troubled with them. The river does not habitually, each year, overflow its banks—that is to say, it has no permanent and regular rises, as the Arkansas, Missouri, and other of our rivers have. It is nothing but a drain or canal, through which the surplus water of the country, caused by rain, springs, etc., passes off. Its rises, in consequence, are very sudden, but the water runs off equally fast. It was quite an agreeable sight in passing up, to see the banks, which