through the Caribbean Sea is suddenly narrowed between Cape San Antonio and Cape Catoche; here the upper and warmer current, being condensed, strikes deeper, and forces to the surface the cold water from the under current, sometimes occasioning a roaring and very peculiar noise.  By this means the Gulf stream is divided, part turning to the eastward around Cuba and between that island and Florida, and part turning to the westward, north of the banks of Campeachy, and striking Padre Island, an island upon the coast of Texas, about one hundred and forty miles this current strikes, there are very deep soundings, almost up with the land.  South of this point, upon the beach, are found mahogany and other tropical drift-wood, brought there from the tropics; while north of it the drift wood is oak, ash, and cotton-wood, brought from the north by a current running counter to the Gulf stream, which I will hereafter describe.  From Padre Island the Gulf stream strikes off to the north-east to the mouth of the Mississippi, thence around the coast of Florida and through her keys, until it joins the other branch.  Inside the Gulf stream, along the coast of Texas, is the counter-current before referred to, making down the coast at the rate of two to three miles per hour, and bringing down the silt and mud of the Mississippi, Sabine, etc.  I have seen the water off the Island of Galveston the color of chocolate, after a long norther.

Above the centre of Padre Island the coast of Texas deepens at the rate of about a fathom to the mile, until at twenty fathoms there is a coral reef, and on the easterly side of this reef the water deepens, as by the side of a perpendicular wall, to a very great depth.  This reef marks the boundary of the Gulf stream, and also the boundary of the terrible tornado.  The tornado of the Gulf of Mexico never passes this barrier, never strikes the land, nor has it been known within memory of man upon the coast.

It seems to confine itself to the course of the warm water of the stream, and the great ‘Father of the Waters’ spreads his counter-current down the coast of Texas, like a long flowing garment, fending off the storm and the whirlwind, and thus still better fitting Texas for the white man and the white man’s labor.

With this freedom from violent storms comes the delicious southerly wind in the summer, which gives health and moisture to the larger part of Texas.  This wind varies in the point from which it flows.  From Sabine to Matagorda its course is from south-east to south-south-east, growing more and more to the south as the coast tends to the south, until at the Rio Grande it blows from due south with perhaps a little westing in it.  The course of this wind will explain the three belts of Texas, the rainy, that of less rain, and that of great drought.

This wind from the south-east corner from across the ocean and gulf (being a continuation