Laredo, Texas

“ A mild West show, which would be equally accurate, would surprise him even more; at least, if it was organized in the wildest part of Texas between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
When he leaves this first city and touches at the border of Mexico, at Laredo, and starts forth again across the prairie of cactus and chaparral towards “Corpus,” he feels assured that at last he is done with parlor-cars and civilization; that he is about to see the picturesque and lawless side of the Texan existence, and that he has taken his life in his hands. ”

“ Mexico agreed to this proposal and a treaty covering the matter was proclaimed in January 1907. The principal towns and cities on the river are: Brownsville, Texas; Matamoros, Mexico; Laredo, Texas; El Paso, Texas ”

“ Let us suppose, for instance, that from the mouth of the Rio Grande a boundary line should be drawn up to Laredo, the headpoint of steam navigation on the Rio Grande, and in the latitude of Laredo a line from thence west to the gulf of California, that territory would embrace, besides the old province of Texas, a small portion of the States of Tamaulipas and Coahuila, the greatest part of the State of Chihuahua, the State of Sonora, New Mexico, and both Californias. ”

“ The adoption of American farm machinery was fast becoming universal. On one plantation alone, 250 plows were in profitable operation. The Southern Pacific road completed its connection with Eagle Pass in Texas and the Mexican capital, while the National crossed the frontier at Laredo. On the Mexican Central hundreds of cars loaded with American merchandise and manufactures, might be seen awaiting an opportunity to commence their journey south, and awake the chaparral and canon with the glad tidings of trade development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The National takes a much shorter line to the capital than the Central, say eight hundred miles, as against thirteen hundred. Its initial point is Laredo, on the Texas frontier. It is running already into Monterey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, and built below Saltillo. Of the charms of the little city of Monterey, which has medicinal springs beside it, travellers begin to speak in the warmest terms. It touches San Luis Potosi and Celaya as well as the Central, and has along or near its course other cities, well peopled, though less known to fame, as Matehuala, the population of which is 25,000. ”

“ Along the upper Rio Grande, the raids into Texas were made by Indians: the Kickapoos, Lipans and Apaches. These tribes had settled in that great arid and sparsely inhabited area that extends south of the Rio Grande from Laredo to El Paso. That part of Mexico was a no-man’s land. The small Mexican and Indian villages were a law unto themselves. The Mexicans often joined the Indians on their raids, and the cattle and horses brought back found a ready market in the Mexican villages. ”

“ Such was the condition of Texas when President Victoria's administration appointed a commission in 1827, with General Manuel Mier y Teran as its chief, to ascertain the boundary line between the Mexican and American republics under the treaty of 1819. [9] Teran then had an opportunity of observing the giant springing up in that portion of his country. He went as far as Laredo and San Antonio de Béjar, and examined nearly the whole of that region. Austin's colonists were almost all Americans, and of the same nationality were those who in 1826 settled the western line of the Colorado and Nueces. ”

“ When the Mexican got back that night his mujer told him that Señor Berry had gone to San Antonio in the buckboard, and that he had left word for the remuda to be turned back into the big pasture and for the repair of the corrals to be continued. “They say” that the deposit that Berry made at the Frost National Bank was a clean $17,000, nearly all in silver.
1 Santa Anna, according to Brown, did cross into Texas at Laredo, but he went to San Antonio, not Goliad. ”

“ The town has a bank, several second-rate hotels and first-rate bar-rooms, many large mercantile houses, an "opera-house," a ten-thousand-dollar school fund, telephones, and water-works, and electric lights in prospective for the very near future. Yet, withal, Laredo is set down in the midst of a landscape that is absolutely heart-rending in its dreariness, and rejoices in a
climate that, though healthy, is most discouraging and appalling, alike to resident and new arrival. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Laredo itself contains about six thousand inhabitants, constantly increasing in number, and the American element yearly gaining on the inert and useless Mexican.
Every town on the Rio Grande has its counterpart on the opposite side of the river, and so there is here a new and an old Laredo. One, the American, is busy, prosperous, progressive; the other, the Mexican, is idle, lifeless, and gone to decay. ”

“ CHAPTER I INTO THE COOLER SOUTH You are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is a purely—though not pure—Mexican town with a slight American tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sell sticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. ”

“ Laredo was a Mexican city before it was an American. It is Mexican now, five to one. Nuevo Laredo, opposite, is held by the Huertistas and Americans don't go over there. In fact a guard on the bridge will not let them. So those that sneak across have to wade (which can be done almost anywhere) and go at night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people there produce little, and live on little. That is not the characteristic, I take it, of the people of the Eastern or of the Middle States, or of the Valley of the Mississippi. They produce a good deal, and they consume a good deal.
Again, Sir, New Mexico is not like Texas. I have hoped, and I still hope, that Texas will be filled up from among ourselves, not with Spaniards, not with peons; that its inhabitants will not be Mexican landlords, with troops of slaves, predial or otherwise. ”

“ When I sought my berth that night, the third of the journey, we were still speeding across the boundless Indian prairies; but when I awoke, next morning, the beautiful plains, with vast herds of cattle feeding on them, and covered with flowers of every color, proclaimed our entrance into Texas. Diagonally across this grandest of States we drew a southward-trending line, and the thousand pictures that danced before our eyes—that appeared, vanished, and were replaced by others, which in turn waltzed away into space—were seen through the crystal plate of a hotel-car window. ”

“ THE trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid’s fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one’s credit at twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.
It happened in old Justo Valdos’s gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. ”

“ The distance from Laredo to Monterey, our destination, is one hundred and seventy miles, for the road does not directly approach it, as land is worthless here, and a road must zigzag over the country, and cover a good deal of it, in order to get some return for its outlay. It would seem that Nature intended the broad and arid Rio Grande valley to be forever a dividing line between the two republics ”

“ Then do the tropical birds spread their resplendent plumage—the flowers their dew-besprinkled petals—to receive his fervent kisses. All nature again seems glad, to acknowledge him as its god.
Resplendent as any bird that flutters among the foliage of south-western Texas—fair as any flower that blooms within it—gladdest was she who appeared upon the housetop of Casa del Corvo.
Aurora herself, rising from her roseate couch, looked not fresher than the young Creole, as she stood contemplating the curtains of that very couch, from which a Texan sun was slowly uplifting his globe of burning gold. ”

“ The Burnt Prairie. On the great plain of Texas, about a hundred miles southward from the old Spanish town of San Antonio de Bejar, the noonday sun is shedding his beams from a sky of cerulean brightness. Under the golden light appears a group of objects, but little in unison with the landscape around them: since they betoken the presence of human beings, in a spot where there is no sign of human habitation. ”

“ The elevation of Rodriguez is 651 feet. The country is now covered with nopal-bushes and mesquite. The mountain-ridge gradually subsides into the plain. We cross the Salado River, and reach Huisachoto (135 miles) , where the road-bed curves eastward. The next station is Jarita (148 miles) . Here the altitude is 674 feet. The surrounding country is flat and uninteresting as far as the frontier. Passing Sanchez (150 miles) , New Laredo (166 miles) is reached. The Mexican National Railway crosses the Mexican Southern just before reaching its station.
NEW LAREDO.
Population, about 10,000 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ I see around me, widespread and beautiful, the free State of Texas. Below me, clad in flowers and bathed in mellow light, lies Austin. Crowning the hills, on which fifty years ago the Red Man dwelt in his wigwams and hunting-lodges, are stately government buildings, mansions, and churches. The enclosing gardens, rich in the herbs and blossoms of a semi-tropical region, are fair under the over-arching blue sky. In their midst, crowning its own hill-tops, stands the University planned by the Republic in 1839. ”

“ Since young Father Latour's arrival in America, a railroad had been built through from New York to Cincinnati; but there it ended. New Mexico lay in the middle of a dark continent. The Ohio merchants knew of two routes only. One was the Santa Fé trail from St. Louis, but at that time it was very dangerous because of Comanche Indian raids. His friends advised Father Latour to go down the river to New Orleans, thence by boat to Galveston, across Texas to San Antonio, and to wind up into New Mexico along the Rio Grande valley. ”

“ But, except to pause a moment to gather up these scattered threads of history that connect San Antonio with the country we are about to visit, we have no cause to linger here; our destination is Mexico. Let us return to the Rio Grande. The Mexican monks pushed their religious conquests into the Indian country, founding fortified posts as far east as San Antonio; but there was no permanent settlement on the Rio Grande until 1737, when the Presidio of Laredo was established. Herds of cattle and horses gradually extended over the intervening country, and to the south and west ”

“ In a barren tract of land, that lay about half way between the hacienda and the Fort—and that did not appear to belong to any one—he arrived at the terminus of his limping expedition. There was a grove of mezquit, with, some larger trees shading it; and in the midst of this, a rude hovel of “wattle and dab,” known in South-Western Texas as a jacalé.
It was the domicile of Miguel Diaz, the Mexican mustanger—a lair appropriate to the semi-savage who had earned for himself the distinctive appellation of El Coyote (“Prairie Wolf.”) ”

“ The United States army post is there as of old, with the stars and stripes proudly waving over its fine buildings.
“To east and southeastward are Goliad and Gonzales, sacred in the pages of Texas history; and the river La Vaca, up which La Salle and his men sailed to build ill-fated Fort St. Louis; and the San Jacinto, washing the reedy edge of the famous battle-ground. There are Houston and Columbia, whose streets in the early days were trod by the fathers of the Republic. There is Nacogdoches; and there is the Old San Antonio Road, which is still a traveled highway ”