LAREDO  , a

city and the county-seat of Webb county, Texas, U.S.A., and a sub-port of entry, on the Rio Grande opposite Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and 150 M . S. of San Antonio . Pop . (1900) 13,429, of whom 6882 were foreign-born (mostly Mexicans) and 82 negroes; (1910 census) 14,855 . It is served by the International & Great Northern, the National of Mexico, the Texas Mexican and the Rio Grande & Eagle Pass railways, and is connected by bridges with Nuevo Laredo . Among the principal buildings are the U.S . Government Building, the City Hall and the County Court House; and the city's institutions include the Laredo Seminary (1882) for boys and girls, the Mercy Hospital, the National Railroad of Mexico Hospital and an Ursuline Convent . Loma Vista Park (65 acres) is a pleasure resort, and immediately W. of Laredo on the Rio Grande is Fort McIntosh (formerly Camp Crawford), a United States military post . Laredo is a jobbing centre for trade between the United States and Mexico, and is a sub-port of entry in the Corpus Christi Customs District . It is situated in a good farming and cattle-raising region, irrigated by water from the Rio Grande . The principal crop is Bermuda onions; in 1909 it was estimated that 1500 acres in the vicinity were devoted to this crop, the average yield per acre being about 20,000 lb . There are coal mines about 25 M. above Laredo on the Rio Grande, and natural gas was discovered about 28 m .

E. in 1908 . The manufacture of bricks is an important

industry . Laredo was named from the seaport in Spain, and was founded in 1767 as a Mexican town; it originally included what is now Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and was long the only Mexican town on the left bank of the river . It was captured in 1846 by a force of Texas Rangers, and in 1847 was occupied by U.S. troops under General Lamar . In 1852 it was chartered as a city of Texas . LA ROLE, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gironde, on the right bank of the Gironde, 38 m . S.E. of Bordeaux by rail . Pop . (1906) 3469 . La Reole grew up round a monastery founded in the 7th or 8th century, which was reformed in the 11th century and took the name of Regula, whence that of the town . A church of the end of the 112th century and some of the buildings (18th century) are left . There is also a town hall of the 12th and 14th centuries .

The town fortifications were dismantled by

order of Richelieu, but remains dating from the 12th and 14th centuries are to be seen, as well as a ruined chateau built by Henry II. of England . La Reole has a sub-prefecture, a tribunal of first instance, a communal college and an agricultural school . The town is the centre of. the district in which the well-known breed of Bazadais cattle is reared . It is an agricultural market and carries on trade in the wine of the region together with liqueur distillery and the manufacture of casks, rope, brooms, &c .