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Remember the Alamo By: Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (1831-1919) |
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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 it was and
has been in all other cities since the world began... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Fiction |
History |
Literature |
War stories |
Westerns |
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