Mr. Stephen F. Austin invited me to take rooms at the old Austin
mansion; he requested me to make one of them a depot for my
mineralogical collections, and he rode out with me to examine
several mines.
He was a gentleman of an acute and cultivated mind, and great suavity of
manners. He appreciated the object of my visit, and saw at once the
advantages that might result from the publication of a work on the
subject. For Missouri, like the other portions of the Mississippi
Valley, had come out of the Late War with exhaustion. The effects of a
peace were to lower her staples, lead, and furs, and she also severely
felt the reaction of the paper money system, which had created extensive
derangement and depression. He possessed a cautious, penetrating mind,
and was a man of elevated views. He had looked deeply into the problem
of western settlement, and the progress of American arts, education, and
modes of thinking and action over the whole western world, and was then
meditating a movement on the Red River of Arkansas, and eventually
Texas.
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