The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 22, July 1918 - April, 1919 Page: 210
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The Southwestern HFstorical Quarterly
ent counties of Kleberg Jim Wells, Duval, and Live Oak, and a
portion of Nueces County, abounded in tunas. Prickly pears were
far more abundant there than in any other portion of Texas,
except the region immediately north of the lower Rio Grande.
South of this first great tuna field there is a belt of sandy soil,
which includes, roughly, the present counties of Willacy, Brooks,
and Jim Hogg, which is not adapted to growing cactus, and in
which this plant is, and always has been, rare. This belt of sandy
soil varies in width from forty to sixty miles, being widest near
the coast, and extends westward from the coast almost to the Rio
Grande. South of this sandy stretch there is another great tuna
field, which includes Cameron, HIidalgo, and Starr Counties, where
the prickly pear is even more abundant and prolific than in the
region north of the sands and south of the Nueces; but whereas
the northern tuna belt was until very recent years a vast prairie,
with only occasional clumps of mesquite, live oak, and huisache,
the tuna belt near the Rio Grande was, from the earliest his-
torical times, interspersed with immense forests and impenetrable
thickets of mesquite, ebony, huisache, guajillo, and other thorny
trees and shrubs.
A journey of thirty or forty leagues "toward Panuco" along
the coast from the region of the mouth of the Guadalupe River,
would take the castaways to the vicinity of the present towns of
Kingsville and Riviera. The latter town is near the southern
limits of the northern tuna belt. An inland journey of ten or
a dozen leagues from there would place them in southeastern Duval
County, near the southern line of the northern tuna belt, and in
an undulating region where rainwater "collects in places here and
From the standpoint of the botanist the prickly pear is to be "found"
north and east of the region indicated, but only in occasional and un-
fruitful clusters. The prickly pear is usually found associated with lime-
stone, or else growing in a silty soil, washed from limestone formations,
and is never very prolific elsewhere. Thus the author of A Visit to Texas
(Goodrich & Wiley, New York, 1831) after traversing all the region be-
tween Velasco and Anahuac on horseback in 1831, was very much sur-
prised to find the "nopal -or rock pear, which I had seen in the northern
states growing to a height of five or six inches," growing to ,a height of
ten or fifteen feet, on Smith Point in Cha.mbers County. He states
that there were two kinds, having fruit of different colors. These isolated
growths of prickly pear are to be found where soil conditions chance to be
favorable (as at Smith Point, which is based on an oyster shell reef),
but nowhere in such quantities as to afford sustenance to entire tribes
of Indians, even very small tribes.210
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 22, July 1918 - April, 1919, periodical, 1919; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117156/m1/224/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.