This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
[[blank page]] [[end page]] [[start page]] [[underlined]] Houston & San Antonio [[/underlined]] [[underlined]] June 24 [[/underlined]] Left Houston at 10 & reached San Antonio about 6. Rode all day over beautiful prairies with only here & there tree strips or patches of timber along the streams until we reached the Colorado R. where a scattered, scrubby growth of mainly live oak, post oak, & black jack & farther west mesquite forms a half timber, covering the rougher & more elevated region. Almost all the forenoon we rode over beautiful full prairie often without a tree in sight The country grows steadily dryer from Houston west. The last pines ([[underline]]teda[[/underline]] & [[underline]]mitis[[/underline]]) were seen a few (probably 6) miles west of Houston & no Liquidamber were noted west of the Brazos, [[Hensach?]] were abundant west of the Brazos & an occasional mesquite seen. West of the Colorado the country became much dryer, grass shorter, crops poor or entirely dried up. At Flatonia the aridity becomes more evident, mesquite becoming common & the grass more in bunches & crops an almost total failure. [[end page]]
Transcription Notes:
"black jack" = blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica).
The pine he calls "teda" is probably Pinus taeda (loblolly pine); "mitis" is another name for P. echinata (shortleaf pine) per www.ibiblio.org/pic/Tree_pages/Pinus_echinata.htm.
"Liquidamber" should be Liquidambar (sweetgum) but transcribed as written.