Harpers Ferry Free Press

FROM TEXAS.

A gentleman who has lately been on an exploring tour in the Province of Texas, passed through Arkansas, and has communicated the following interesting facts relative to the situation of that country. He represents the condition of the people as miserable in the extreme; industry is scarcely known among them; and business of every description at a stand. Although possessed of one of the finest and most fertile portions of the globe, yet agriculture is entirely neglected, and, to a person accustomed to civilized life they present a picture literally bordering on starvation; bread-stuffs are very scarce and dear, and, like the natives of the forest, they depend almost entirely on the chase for a scanty subsistence. At St. Antonio, a place which has once been a wealthy and populous city, nothing but wretchedness was visible. That place is garrisoned by about 75 soldiers, who were nearly destitute of ammunition. The people of that place have once been in a state of ease and affluence, but in consequence of the soldiers of the Spanish and Republican armies having been quartered on, and pillaging them, for several years, together with their own indolence, they are now reduced to the most abject state of poverty. This remark is also applicable to La Badia and the other principal posts which our informant visited. Ark. Gaz.