Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Dreams of a Sheep Ranch Sheep Raising Herding Sheep Something About Texas Land Grants The "Texas Fever" Why I wanted to Go Hunting in Texas Father Spys the Land Our Plantation Father Comes Home The Bigness of Texas Where We were Going What I Hoped to Do Cattle Driving How We Set Out A Laborious Journey Comanche Indians Father to the Rescue Arrival at Fort Towson Preparing for a Storm A Dry "Norther" Two Kinds of Northers How Turkeys Kill Snakes Deer and Rattlesnakes A Corral of Wagons On the Trail Again Mesquite A Texas Sheep Ranch Profits from Sheep Father's Land Claim Spanish Measurements The Chaparral Cock Night on the Trinity Standing Guard A Turkey Buzzard Plans for Building a House The Cook Shanty A Storm of Rain A Day of Discomfort Thinking of the Old Home Waiting for the Sun Too Much Water The Stream Rising Trying to Save the Stock The Animals Stampeded Saving Our Own Lives A Raging Torrent A Time of Disaster The Flood Subsiding A Jack Rabbit Reparing Damages Rounding up the Stock FAfter the Flood Waiting for Father Recovering Our Goods Setting to Work Sawing Out Lumber In the Saw Pit Wild Cattle A Disagreeable Intruder Odd Hunting A Supply of Fresh Meat "Jerking" Beef Searching for the Cattle Our New Home Planting and Building Bar-O Ranch An Odd Cart The Visitors Zeba's Curiosity Possible Treachery Suspicious Behavior Gyp's Fight With a Cougar In a Dangerous Position Hunting Wild Hogs Treed by Peccaries Gyp's Obedience My Carelessness Vicious Little Animals Father Comes to the Rescue Increase in my Flock Unrest of the Indians Texas Joins the Union War with Mexico Selling Wool Peace on the Trinity My Dream Fulfilled

Philip of Texas - James Otis




Spanish Measurements

The claim was located, as I have said, on the West Fork of the Trinity River, but it must not be supposed that our land ran any very great distance along the stream, for the laws of Texas regarding the taking up of a homestead claim prohibited a man from occupying on the river bank more than a certain distance, that is to say, he could have one Spanish vara to each acre in a survey of three hundred and twenty acres, and three-fourths of a vara per acre for all other surveys.

You may be certain my father had taken all the land adjoining the stream which the law allowed him, and I was well pleased that we had such a large share of river frontage.

I was wholly ignorant about Spanish measurements at the time we arrived, but since then I have fixed the tables in my head fairly well. A vara is a little over thirty-three inches; a labor is about one hundred and seventy-seven acres. Of course we reckoned our boundaries in American measurements, but in all our relations with the Mexicans it was necessary to know of what we were speaking.