Remember the Alamo [0]
Remember the Alamo
by Amelia E. Barr
CHAPTER I.
THE CITY IN THE WILDERNESS.
"What, are you stepping westward?" "Yea."
* * * * *
Yet who would stop or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter there was none,
With such a sky to lead him on!"
--WORDSWORTH.
"Ah! cool night wind, tremulous stars,
Ah! glimmering water,
Fitful earth murmur,
Dreaming woods!"
--ARNOLD.
In A. D. sixteen hundred and ninety-two, a few Franciscan
monks began to build a city. The site chosen was a lovely
wilderness hundreds of miles away from civilization on every
side, and surrounded by savage and warlike tribes. But the
spot was as beautiful as the garden of God. It was shielded
by picturesque mountains, watered by two rivers, carpeted with
flowers innumerable, shaded by noble trees joyful with
the notes of a multitude of singing birds. To breathe the
balmy atmosphere was to be conscious of some rarer and finer
life, and the beauty of the sunny skies--marvellous at dawn
and eve with tints of saffron and amethyst and opal--was like
a dream of heaven.
One of the rivers was fed by a hundred springs situated in the
midst of charming bowers. The monks called it the San
Antonio; and on its banks they built three noble Missions.
The shining white stone of the neighborhood rose in graceful
domes and spires above the green trees. Sculptures, basso-
relievos, and lines of gorgeous coloring adorned the
exteriors. Within, were splendid altars and the appealing
charms of incense, fine vestures and fine music; while from
the belfreys, bells sweet and resonant called to the savages,
who paused spell-bound and half-afraid to listen.
Certainly these priests had to fight as well as to pray. The
Indians did not suffer them to take possession of their Eden
without passionate and practical protest. But what the monks
had taken, they kept; and the fort and the soldier followed
the priest and the Cross. Ere long, the beautiful Mission
became a beautiful city, about which a sort of fame full of
romance and mystery gathered. Throughout the south and west,
up the great highway of the Mississippi, on the busy streets
of New York, and among the silent hills of New England, men
spoke of San Antonio, as in the seventeenth century they spoke
of Peru; as in the eighteenth century they spoke of Delhi, and
Agra, and the Great Mogul.
Sanguine French traders carried thither rich ventures in fancy
wares from New Orleans; and Spanish dons from the wealthy
cities of Central Mexico, and from the splendid homes of
Chihuahua, came there to buy. And from the villages of
Connecticut, and the woods of Tennessee, and the lagoons of
Mississippi, adventurous Americans entered the Texan territory
at Nacogdoches. They went through the land, buying horses and
lending their ready rifles and stout hearts to every effort of
that constantly increasing body of Texans, who, even in their
swaddling bands, had begun to cry Freedom!
At length this cry became a clamor that shook even the old
viceroyal palace in Mexico; while in San Antonio it gave a
certain pitch to all conversation, and made men wear their
cloaks, and set their beavers, and display their arms, with
that demonstrative air of independence they called los
Americano. For, though the Americans were numerically few,
they were like the pinch of salt in a pottage--they gave the
snap and savor to the whole community.
Over this Franciscan-Moorish city the sun set with an
incomparable glory one evening in May, eighteen thirty-five.
The white, flat-roofed, terraced houses--each one in its
flowery court--and the domes and spires of the Missions, with
their gilded crosses, had a mirage-like beauty in the rare,
soft atmosphere, as if a dream of Old Spain had been
materialized in a wilderness of the New World.
But human life in all its essentials was in San Antonio, as