horns of the buffalo are short, but very sharp pointed, although thick at the base. Being very hard and black, they are highly prized for cups and other purposes. Its flesh, when fat, is excellent, especially the hump: the skins, covered with an excessively thick hair, nearly approaching to wool, are much used in the Northern parts of the United States, more especially as a wrapper when travelling in the sledges or sleighs, over the ice or snow. The Indians give a softness and pliability to these skins greater than that of the buck, or even doe-skin of Europe. The following is, I believe, the process adopted:—after tanning with sumach and bark, the skin is stretched over a hole in the earth, and smoked: the brains of the animal and alum are also rubbed into it. It is subsequently painted in cheques, diamonds, and similar figures, the colours being very durable.
Until the year 1823, excepting the wild Indian tribes, there were no inhabitants except at the town of San Antonio de Bexar, and in its immediate neighbourhood; at the fort of the Bahia del Espiritu Santo, and in the environs of Nacogdoch. The whole number hardly amounted to three thousand souls. Many small grants had been made to individuals of lands near the rivers Sabina, Nechas, and Angulino, but nearly all of them remained untenanted. The first persons who ever took efficacious measures to carry into effect extensive schemes of colonization in Texas on their own private account, were Mr. Austin, an inhabitant of Louisiana, and Colonel Milam. The former, after traversing this vast country near the coast, fixed on the spot between the rivers Brazos and Colorado, where he obtained a very extensive grant from the Spanish Government. Embarrassments, owing to the failure of a large proportion of the banks of the Western States, together with the Revolution, prevented his reaping the fruits of his exertions. His eldest son, Stephen Fuller Austin, succeeded to the claims and to the indefatigable and enterprising spirit of his father, who died about the year 1820 or 1821. In 1823, he obtained from the first Independent Congress the recognition of the grant; and though inundations, which there was no reason to anticipate, have twice done serious injury to the infant colony, he has the merit of having succeeded in peopling a wilderness, and pro-
