Explore "The Pirates of the Prairies" by Gustave Aimard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In order fully to comprehend the ensuing facts, we are constrained to relate here an event which occurred about twenty years before our story commences.
At that remote period Texas belonged, if not _de facto_, still _de jure_, to Mexico. Marvellously situated on the Mexican Gulf, endowed with a temperate climate and a fertile soil, which, if tickled with a spade, laughs with a harvest, Texas is assuredly one of the richest countries in the New World. Hence, the Government, foreseeing the future of this province, did all in its power to populate it.