The above statements refer to average seasons in the central and southern latitudes of the State, and to the ordinary culture of the main crops. Some of them might be grown earlier, and would ripen if not planted till months later. Most garden vegetables can be planted throughout the season, so as to afford a constant repetition of them for the table.
_Wool Production._--Wool husbandry is a large and important interest in Texas. Sheep can be grown with high profit for domestic uses on the moderately elevated dry _sound_ lands of all parts of the State. But the sheep region proper--that where the pasturage is best adapted to them, both in summer and winter, where with safety and health they can be herded in great flocks, and where the land is cheap, and wool can be most cheaply grown for exportation--lies in Western Texas. It is bounded on the east and west by the Guadalupe and Nueces Rivers, and so far as yet experimented, north by the Colorado River, say from Bastrop upward.
South of San Antonio the sheep region is generally level, descending with a moderate slope to the coast. But the hilly country, commencing five or six miles north of San Antonio, is regarded _par excellence_ as _the_ sheep region. The hills further north become more abrupt, with narrower valleys between, and large river bottoms are reached. The present center of the sheep region is Kendall County, appropriately named after the late George Wilkins Kendall, the senior editor of the New Orleans _Picayune_, one of the best conducted and most readable newspapers in the United States. He and Horace Greeley served their apprenticeship together in the office of the Concord (N. H.) _Statesman_. In 1834 he went to New Orleans and established the _Picayune_, and entered on his career of success.
He went to the Mexican war under Ben McCulloch with the Texas Rangers. He died October 22, 1868, at his residence in Kendall County, thirty miles north of San Antonio.
He was the great sheep-farmer and flock-master of the South, the pioneer of that branch of husbandry in Texas; and he did more than all others to introduce, foster, and instruct the people in its management in a region so adapted by nature to its profitable pursuit.