Corpus Christi, Texas

“ Around the corner from Padre, bordering the Valley, is the gay flavor of Mexico. Visits to the border towns are gala occasions, with little or no red tape. Dollars meet their usual welcome.
Opposite the northern tip of Padre Island is the booming city of Corpus Christi, one of the country’s most beautiful coastal towns. On the mainland, beside the long stretch of the island, Texas presents its most historical and natural points of interest.
To playfolk who want year-round resort recreation; to hunters and fishermen or to treasure hunters and those interested in legends and wildlife ”

“ Such people, most of all, hunger for good schools. Texas is liberal toward her colored school children. To furnish them teachers, skilled in the art and trained so that they shall exert a wholesome social and spiritual influence, is the great desideratum.
The cluster of churches made up of Corpus Christi, Goliad, Helena, Schulenburg and Flatonia, are organized into the Congregational Association of Southwestern Texas. The only two without houses of worship are now moving to purchase “church houses.” Rev. B. C. Church is a very patriarch among them. ”

“ Accordingly, a portion of the Army was ordered to advance into Texas. Corpus Christi was the position selected by General Taylor. He encamped at that place in August, 1845, and the Army remained in that position until the 11th of March, 1846, when it moved westward, and on the 28th of that month reached the east bank of the Rio Grande opposite to Matamoras. This movement was made in pursuance of orders from the War Department, issued on the 13th of January, 1846. ”

“ So complete became the desolation of this southwestern section that, when General Taylor marched with his army from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in 1846, it is said that not an inhabitant existed there. It was not till 1850 that the repopulating of this portion of Texas commenced, when the mustangs were caught or killed, and the foundations laid for that great enterprise of stock-raising, to which alone this arid region is adapted. ”

“ In Texas, on the contrary, the towns are much more numerous and important. Corpus Christi, in the county of Nueces, and all the cities situated on the Rio Bravo, Laredo, Comalites, San Ignacio on the Web, Rio Grande City on the Starr, Edinburgh in the Hidalgo, Santa Rita, Elpanda, Brownsville in the Cameron, formed an imposing league against the pretensions of Florida. So, scarcely was the decision known, when the Texan and Floridan deputies arrived at Baltimore in an incredibly short space of time. ”

“ During the previous visit of the padre, when the chapel was decided on, the order for the finishing material for the building had been placed with the merchant at Shepherd’s, and was brought up from Corpus Christi through his freighters. We now had notice from the merchant that his teamsters had returned, and two four-mule teams went down to the ferry for the lumber, glassware, sash and doors. Miss Jean had been importuning the padre daily to know when the dedication would take place, as she was planning to invite the countryside. ”

“ They are no more ranchmen than the absentee landlord who lives in his London house is a gentleman farmer.
The largest ranch in the United States, and probably in the world, owned by one person, is in Texas, and belongs to Mrs. Richard King, the widow of Captain Richard King. It lies forty-five miles south of Corpus Christi. ”

“ Corpus Christi is a summer and winter resort, with a very dry equable climate (average annual mean, 70.2° F.) and good bathing on the horseshoe beach of Corpus Christi Bay. The city has an extensive coasting trade, and exports fruit, early vegetables, fish and oysters. There was a small Spanish settlement here at an early date, but no American settlement was made until after the Mexican War. Corpus Christi was the base from which General Zachary Taylor made his forward movement to the Rio Grande in 1846. ”

“ This attitude of the reformers towards the festival, however, intensified by their abhorrence of the traffic in indulgences with which it had become closely associated, only tended to establish it more firmly among the adherents of the “old religion.” The procession of the Host on Corpus Christi day became, as it were, a public demonstration of Catholic orthodoxy against Protestantism and later against religious Liberalism. In most countries where religious opinion is sharply divided the procession of Corpus Christi is therefore now forbidden, even when Catholicism is the dominant religion. ”

“ The clergy, anxious to have the Corpus Christi procession to themselves without the trade gilds, may have said to the citizens, “If you will have your plays at another time we will, at our own charge and expense, provide a play on Corpus Christi, so that there shall be no loss to the citizens in that respect.” ”

“ The first church in Texas was one that came in a body from Tennessee, with reinforcements from Alabama and Mississippi, in 1836, and settled at Clarksville. Lynn D’Spain and Mansil W. Matthews were the preachers who came with this church. David Crockett accompanied this caravan on part of its journey. At that time the Mexican constitution prohibited the exercise of any religion except the Roman Catholic, but the agencies of enforcement were weak, the seat of government was far away, and the revolution which made Texas an independent republic was imminent. ”

“ He therefore decided to get through to Corpus Christi in the very shortest time in which the trip [Pg 640] could be made viâ New Braunfels, San Antonio, Victoria, and Port Lavaca, hoping that he might be able to pick him up along some portion of that route, as it was quite evident he made frequent trips in that direction ”

“ This mongrel and mixed congregation of beings, though firmly united in one point (war with Mexico, and that in the expectation of a rich plunder) , are continually at variance on other points. Three thousand Texans would fight against Mexico, but not two hundred against the Mormons; and that for many reasons: government alone, and not an individual, would be a gainer by a victory; in Texas, not a soul cares for anything but himself. Besides, the Mormons are Yankees, and can handle a rifle, setting aside their good drilling and excellent discipline. ”

“ It is rare for the prairie traveller to contemplate such scenes alone—rarer still upon the plains of South-western Texas. In twos at least—but oftener in companies of ten or a score—go they, whose need it is to tempt the perils of that wilderness claimed by the Comanches as ancestral soil.
For all this, a solitary traveller may at times be encountered: for on the same night that witnessed the tender and stormy scenes in the garden of Casa del Corvo, no less than three such made the crossing of the plain that stretches south-westward from the banks of the Leona River. ”

“ In Seville, where the street displays of Holy Week are under the charge of the religious brotherhoods, or cofradias, Corpus Christi gives opportunity for the clergy and aristocracy to present a rival exhibition of sanctified luxury and magnificence. ”

“ The Corpus Christi Altar When the triumphant Saviour passes through the village in the shape of bread, they greet Him with palms. The palm of the alps is the birch. Even as the little fir-trees are doomed to lose their lives at Christmas-time, so do the birches at Corpus Christi. They are dragged to the village by the hundred, on great drays, and planted in rows on both sides of the streets through which the procession is intended to go. ”

“ In the physical world Time is accounted the destroyer; though in the moral, it is oft the restorer. Nowhere has it effected greater changes than in Texas—during the last decade—and especially in the settlements of the Nueces and Leona.
Plantations have sprung up, where late the chapparal thickly covered the earth; and cities stand, where the wild steed once roamed over a pathless prairie. ”

“ To get out north of El Paso would take you across the Llano Estacado which in those days was considered a vast treeless plain, unbroken by any topographic changes, and completely devoid of water holes.
The accompanying map, published in 1856 in Yoakum’s History of Texas, shows clearly the political subdivisions and settlements of Texas in those times. A substantial part of the State, from the Panhandle to the upper Rio Grande, appears to be completely uninhabited and, therefore, politically unorganized. ”

“ Imagine such an extent of territory open to new settlers! A republic nearly eight times as large as the state of New York, nine times as large as the state of Ohio, and six times as large as all New England put together!
There was no longer any surprise in my mind that the people who made up the government of Texas would be willing to give six hundred and forty acres to every man with a family who would settle there, when, within their boundaries, they had more than two hundred million acres. ”

“ Its beautiful site, overlooking the city, is this summer to be crowned with its comely edifice, which, beyond the outer shell, is to await the incoming of funds for its completion. This trip has resulted with me in a profound impression as to the need of this institution and as to the grand sweep of its future usefulness. Nothing better can be done for the Freedmen of Texas. This empire, stretching a thousand miles on the Rio Grande and eight hundred miles eastward to the Sabine, calls mightily for such an institute to train those who shall be the teachers of her sable children. ”

“ With the exception of the Roman Catholic church it has the best house of worship in the city. On Sunday afternoon, Rev. Mr. Strong, the Congregational pastor, and myself attended service at the Roman Catholic church. We went into the body of the church and took a first class seat, and the fact that one was colored did not even draw attention to us. It was taken as a matter of course. The colored people of Texas are taxed for $20,000,000 of property. In the cities they make up about one-third of the population. An enlargement of our church work in this State is greatly needed. ”

“ But for the heat, and the sand, and the fleas, and the Border Mexican, it would be pleasant to live in Laredo, if one were not obliged to gaze continuously upon its joyless scenery. But as Laredo is the "gateway" to the promised land of Mexico, one need not remain here if he choose to go farther, for here two great international lines cross the Border and invade Mexican territory. One hundred and sixty-seven miles west is Corpus Christi, the Gulf terminus of the "Mexican National" railroad, while to the north is San Antonio, connected with Laredo by the "International and Great Northern." ”

“ And, accordingly, here I am on my way to Texas to join Sam Houston and the rest against Santa Anna and his crew.”
“There seems to be a strong tide set in toward that country,” spoke another of the party. “I hear that there’s hundreds go down the river every week.”
“They’ll be needed,” nodded Colonel Crockett. “Everything looks promising for a long war; and Texas, so I’ve heard, is just the place where one can be carried out to any length by men who fight and run as the Mexicans do.” ”

“ So many bad men of Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." ”

“ The Texans had not a thousand effective men when they declared their independence of Mexico, which was then able to raise an army of two hundred thousand men. But that army was an army of priest-ridden slaves, like yourselves, and the gallant little band of Protestant Texas, composed chiefly of Americans, defied their power; declared themselves independent, banished from among them the treacherous Spanish priests, who were in Texas; they fought for their freedom and they won it. ”

“ They will illustrate the fertility in buried treasure legend of all that stretch of Texas, for the most part yet unploughed, lying towards the Rio Grande and populated by Mexicans and by Texans of frontier stock. McMullen County itself has as yet neither railroad nor bank. The people are as yet unhackneyed by the plow or commercial secretary. They still talk a language seasoned with Mexican idiom and honest with the soil’s honesty; they have their old-time dances; they welcome heartily any decent stranger. ”

“ Immigrants poured in. Many came from “the States”; but others crossed the wide seas to find homes in that fertile Texas whose story of struggle and triumph was in everybody’s mouth. Henry Castro, a French gentleman, who was consul-general for Texas at Paris, obtained in 1842 large grants of land from the Republic, and brought over five hundred families from France. These settled on the Medina River west of San Antonio. Another important colony came from Germany under the leadership of the Prince de Solms, and founded the thrifty town of New Braunfels on the Guadalupe. ”

“ He encamped on the 20th at the Mission of La Espada on the San Antonio River. Recruits came in rapidly. Sam Houston, who had given his last five-dollar bill to a messenger to spread the call for volunteers, arrived with a detachment of men from East Texas. Bowie and Travis, Crockett and Fannin, Milam, Burleson, “Deaf” Smith, Rusk, Wharton,—these gathered in groups about the camp, little dreaming that each man of them carried within his own breast something of which the history of Texas was to be made. ”