[Marshall] Texas Republican, July 14, 1860
The drouth still continues. For weeks the thermometer has stood at a hundred and over in the shade. Each day seems to excel its predecessor in intensity of heat and sultriness. On Saturday, the thermometer, we are told, stood in the shade at the railroad office at 113, and on the West side of the square in the interior of brick houses at 111. The air was so hot as if it came from over a furnace. The corn crop is ruined beyond redemption, and we have every reason to fear that the cotton crop will share the same fate. The most of the cotton is scarcely 16 inches high, and the squares are falling off.
The State Gazette seems to think that the accounts of this drouth are over estimated. This is a sad mistake. The disaster is greater even than men are willing to admit. It will approach, in some portions of the State, nearly, if not quite, to a famine, and we have every reason to believe it will be necessary to call the legislature together to pass laws to postpone the collection of debts until another crop is made. Such is the actual condition of affairs, extending from the Rio Grande to the Ouachita river in Louisiana, and how far Eastward we know not, and from the Gulf to the 33rd parallel of latitude, with perhaps here and there a favored farm or neighborhood. And yet, to read the newspapers, one would suppose that a tolerably fair crop was being made.