The colonies of SantaFe Author:William Perkins Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and are all devout and somewhat bigoted catholics. All have come with more or less money, from two thousand to twenty thousand franes. (1) San Geronimo is lai... more »d out similarly to Esperanza, but there are only a hundred and twelve concessions measured by Government. Of these eighty five are occupied by the same number of families, in all four hundred and sixty two souls. The rest of the concessions are all engaged by the colonists themselves in behalf of their friends and relatives who are still in Europe, and desire to come out. In a few months more, the lands laid out will be entirely occupied. The Colony is rather far off from the woods, and the colonists consequently loose much time in carting fire-woodand stakes for their corrales. Here there is an absolute necessity for planting trees, of which the peach is the most advanta- geous,as it grows rapidly, and the yearly pruning would give sufficient fire-wood in ;i country like this, where fire-wood is only necessary for cooking purposes. The Colony is only two years old, and as yet little has been done but putting, up the necessary buildings and cultiva ting enough ground to insure a subsistence. forty families of the eighty five, are recent arrivals, and of course have no crop of wheat this year. Thirty five have crops of wheat, and although the land is hastily and superficially cultivated and theseed badly sown,the fields promise very well, and the returns will be at least equal to those Esperanza. There are two hundred and eighty one bushels of wheat sown this year and a good deal of bailey. Thoe families whose late arrival has prevented them from sowing wheat, have cultivated as much land as possible for corn; so that there is no danger of the Colony suffering from scarcity of food. Lands sOwn the first year wit...« less