This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...Geography Of Texas. Texas at that time, regarded it "as the best sale ever made of land of a worthless quality and a disputable title."80 The payment of the $10,000,000 by the United States enabled Texas to clear away all of the old debt of the Republic and left it a handsome surplus in the treasury. Very little effort was made thereafter to sell any of the public land until the close of the Civil War. Acts were passed, however, in 1858 and 1860 which authorized the land commissioner to sell land scrip at the rate of one dollar an acre, which might be located on any part of the vacant and unappropriated public domain.31 It appears that only twenty-three sales, aggregating 10,506 acres, were made in accordance with these laws, and they were only, therefore, of minor importance. But in 1876, the state government was once more pressed with a debt amounting to nearly $5,000,000,82 and again it looked to its public lands for relief from the burden. Consequently a law was passed in 1879 which set apart all of the vacant land in forty-four counties to be sold at the rate of fifty cents an acre and directed that one-half of the proceeds from such sales should be credited to the school fund and the other half applied to the "payment and extinguishment of the bonded debt of the state as fast as the same became due and payable."33 So urgent was the necessity for selling this land that "any person, firm or corporation" desiring to purchase it was authorized to do so upon having it surveyed by a public surveyor. The land could not be sold, however, in tracts of more than 640 acres. As a source of revenue, this method of disposition was not a very important one, especially when the results that were obtained under it are compared with the de...