Through the Eyes of a Child

A Ten Year Old Boy's View of the Situation.

Nuphar lutea, also called Yellow Pond Lily, growing in Spring Lake, possibly the "water bonnet" mentioned

[The following was found among his papers after his decease. -- Ed.]

San Marcos.

San Marcos is a very pretty place to look at, but not very nice to live in. In the summer sometimes the weather is so bad that the farmers can't plant early enough to get their crops in before the frost. In the winter sometimes it rains so much that it is too muddy to plant, and then when it does get dry enough the frost comes and kills a good many vegetables, and then they have to plant over again, sometimes four or five times. When the frost has gone then the dry spell comes on, and in the middle of the summer the wells begin to go dry, and most of the little creeks, too, and the grass dies, and cattle; sometimes the people have to drive their cattle for five or ten miles to water them. The San Marcos River has never gone dry. The people have to haul water for five or six miles, and sometimes more. The mud here is as sticky as glue, pretty near; if you get it on your feet, you can hardly get it off in bad weather with a knife to clean your shoe or boot. The best thing they have here to wear in muddy weather is a pair of big rough boots with high tops. There are a good many negroes (sic) here, and Mexicans; and in 1874 there was not very much business and not very good crops, but in 1875 it was a rainy and muddy winter, and in the summer all the wells went dry, most, and there was hardly any crops made and hardly any business at all, and you could hardly find any butter or eggs or milk, there was hardly anything at the stores, and what you did get was mighty high, the beef was high, and everything.

In the mountains the trees look pretty and green. There are a great many prickly-pears in the mountains, and some caves and big cliffs. There are big live oaks in the woods. They grow in large bunches and are crooked; they start up sort 'o bending over, and then twist about each other and bend over in seven or eight feet from the ground. They are always green; when it is coming spring all the leaves drop off on the ground and leave young buds on. The elm tree is not green in the winter, its leaves drop off, and leave it bare, the leaves cover the ground all over, and they keep dropping all the year. The cedar is a nice tree; it makes the woods smell with its odor; and the aguarita is a little bush which bears a little berry, its leaf has three little thorns on it. When the aguaritas are ripe, they make a nice pie; it tastes a little like currant pies. 

The San Marcos River is a clear stream, it rises in the mountains at the bottom of a large hill; it has flowers and grass growing in the bottom. It is nice to go in a boat on it to the head. You can see the bottom of it in the deepest places. The water-bonnets in some places are stretched across, pretty near, and look like land with weeds growing on it. 

Claude R. Julian.

San Marcos, Tex., Feb. 23, 1876.

(Julian 1883)