San Antonio

“ 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. Women were in their homes, dressing and cooking, nursing their children and dreaming of their lovers. Men were in the market-places, buying and selling, talking of politics and anticipating war. ”

“ But when some real situation does develop, San Antonio has glorious little thrills. To be the incubator of revolution is almost as exciting as to have bull-fights or a suburban battle-field, the treasures for which San Antonio cannot easily forgive her rival, El Paso. Each new plot-hatching of this sort gives the big Texas town fresh thrills. ”

“ Pines, and the white walls, and dismounted bronze cannon of the Presidio, that looked blankly and hopelessly seaward.
For all this, the pueblo of San Antonio was the cynosure of the covetous American eye. Its vast leagues of fertile soil, its countless herds of cattle, the semi-tropical luxuriance of its vegetation, the salubrity of its climate, and the existence of miraculous mineral springs, were at once a temptation and an exasperation to greedy speculators of San Francisco. ”

“ Then comes the hour when the crowds are gone, the town asleep, its noisy clocks speaking midnight hours to mere emptiness—San Antonio breathes heavily, dreams of the days when she was a Spanish town of no slight importance, and then looks forward to the morrow. She believes that her golden age is not yet come. Her plans for the future are ambitious, her opportunity is yet to come. In so far as those dreams involve the passing of the old in San Antonio and the coming of the new, God grant that they will never come true. ”

“ San Antonio, the dominating peak, rises towards the eastern extremity of the range to a height of about six thousand feet, forming a sure landmark throughout the valley and all the way down to the coast, without, however, possessing much striking individuality. The whole range, seen from the plain, with the hot sun beating upon its southern slopes, wears a terribly forbidding aspect. ”

“ From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping stretch of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green, billowy mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with nearly black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat wound the ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old government trail to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest elevation cast its grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of sunshine. ”

“ San Antonio is the oldest of Texan cities, and possesses historical and picturesque show-places which in any other country but our own would be visited by innumerable American tourists prepared to fall down and worship. The citizens of San Antonio do not, as a rule, appreciate the historical values of their city; they are rather tired of them. They would prefer you should look at the new Post-office and the City Hall, and ride on the cable road. But the missions which lie just outside of the city are what will bring the Eastern man or woman to San Antonio, and not the new water-works. ”

“ The sun shone with a genial warmth, and the air was soft and perfume-laden from the thousands of wild flowers exhaling the rich aroma from the wide prairies. It was an eminently respectable party who travelled from San Antonio on the stage that day. There were in the company the Right Rev. Bishop Gregg, of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Texas, and Mr. Breckenridge, president of the First National Bank of San Antonio; three ladies, and six other gentlemen, merchants of San Antonio—in all, eleven travellers, well provided with the means to get through the world without fear of famishing. ”

“ If any place in the Southwest could tempt me to depart from my subject awhile and describe other sections than those pertaining to Mexico, it would be San Antonio, with its springs and parks, old mission building, and most perfect climate. But if we linger too long in Border land we shall not penetrate the region beyond. A day of delight I spent in San Antonio, and then, as I had returned this distance northward merely to make connection with another portion of Old Mexico, I took train westward for Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras. ”

“ The San Antonio itself is represented as joining the Guadalupe high up; but these two great rivers only come together as they approach the coast, to fall into Espiritu Santo bay opposite Matagorda isl., between Indianola and Arkansas City. On some old maps, as that in Winterbotham's History, 1795, San Antonio is set on a stream called Rio Hondo, which is run separately into the Gulf of Mexico between the Nueces and the Guadalupe. ”

“ One can dismiss the mosquito pest; but as we write these lines there comes back to us, like a half-forgotten strain of music, the recollection of sweet-smelling syringas, lilacs, and lemon verbena, mingled with the all-pervading Maltese orange blossoms. Taken as a whole, San Antonio is a perfect Gan-Eden, a garden [Pg 167] of delights in which to linger and to dream, forming a sort of fairy world, peopled with blossoms, where wood-nymphs might hold their moonlight revels. ”

“ There are good and bad cities, artistic and commercial cities, scholarly and manufacturing cities, aristocratic and radical cities. San Antonio, in its political and social character, was a thoroughly radical city. Its population, composed in a large measure of adventurous units from various nationalities, had that fluid rather than fixed character, which is susceptible to new ideas. For they were generally men who had found the restraints of the centuries behind them to be intolerable—men to whom freedom was the grand ideal of life. ”

“ For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and manipulated after the manner of rolling stock, but Chicken stuck to it, leaving it only at necessary times to satisfy his hunger and thirst. He knew it must go down to the cattle country, and San Antonio, in the heart of it, was his goal. There the air was salubrious and mild; the people indulgent and long-suffering. ”

“ We entered a ’bus and drove a mile to the station of the International and Great Northern Railway, which comes down from St. Louis and runs south seventy miles to Laredo, on the Rio Grande and the Mexican border. We passed the bullet-battered walls of the famous Alamo, the hallowed shrine of every loyal Texan, then a large Roman Catholic Cathedral with Spanish roof and bell tower, a huge convent and several stately public buildings. San Antonio is a city of forty thousand people and the last American town of magnitude north of Mexico. ”

“ THE MEXICAN ARMY AT SAN ANTONIO.
The day was almost spent when, from a slight hill, they came in sight of San Antonio, the setting sun gilding the tops of the church steeples, and making the sluggish river appear like a stream of gold.
"No white mustang yet," said Dan. "I reckon we might as well give up the chase and go right into the city."
"Not yet!" cried Poke Stover, pointing with his hand to the northwestward. "Thar ye are, Dan!" ”

“ San Antonio had among its Spanish founders some Jesuit missionaries, and these wise Fathers set their Indian converts at once at good works which took practical shape in the deep water courses which still line the streets at each side to this day, and bring to every man's door water for irrigation, an absolute necessity in this dry climate. This accounts for the wealth of roses which embower the trees and houses. It is a paradise of sweet, flowery shrubs, and the air is vocal with the songs of the happy birds. ”

“ Eighty miles southwest of Austin is the ancient city of San Antonio, known as the "cradle of Texas liberty," a Spanish town upon the San Antonio and 432 San Pedro Rivers, small streams dividing it into irregular parts, the former receiving the latter and flowing into the Gulf at Espiritu Santo Bay. There are sixty thousand people in San Antonio, of many races, chiefly Americans, Mexicans and Germans, and it is a leading wool, cattle, horse, mule and cotton market. ”

“ It is at San Antonio, one hundred and fifty miles from the Rio Grande, that one first enters a really Mexican settlement. Beyond San Antonio, running south, the great inclined plane of Texas, which slopes to the Gulf of Mexico, and which is fertile in the northern and central portions of the State, becomes more sterile, and is covered with chaparral, of cactus, yucca, and mesquit,—vegetation anything but attractive, though shading a peculiarly sweet and nutritious grass, which renders this region desirable for the cow-boy and ranger. ”

“ Having left Mexico early in the morning, we stopped to breakfast at San Antonio, a noble hacienda, about four leagues from Mexico, belonging to the Dowager Marquesa de Vivanco, where we breakfasted with a large party. It is a fine solid mass of building, and as you enter the court-yard, through a deep archway, the great outhouses, stables, and especially the granary, look like remains of feudalism, they are on so large and magnificent a scale. ”

“ There is not an hour in San Antonio when the secret agents of the United States and all the governments and near-governments of our southern neighbor are not fairly swarming in the town and alive to their responsibilities. ”

“ The settlers established themselves around this, and called it San Antonio de Bexar, while a portion of the town E. of this was called San Antonio de Valero. The mission continued to be called San Antonio de Valero till 1783. San Antonio was the centre of important operations in the wars for Mexican and Texan independence. It was incorporated as a city in 1733. The German immigration commenced in 1845. ”

“ The San Antonio, where we first crossed it, is about a mile in width, forming, at this dry season, an immense playa of water-worn stones, through which the river finds its way in shallow channels, whilst during the rains the whole width is covered with a very turbulent and rapid stream, perfectly impassable by man or beast. ”

“ One reaches San Antonio in an hour and a half, and finds a pleasant village, with a river running through it, several streets of good houses, several more of bad ones, a cathedral, a cockpit, a volante, four soldiers on horseback, two on foot, a market, dogs, a bad smell, and lastly, the American Hotel,—a house built in a hollow square, as usual,—kept by a strong-minded woman from the States, whose Yankee thrift is unmistakable, though she has been long absent from the great centres of domestic economy. ”

“ You know how it is in all these new Western cities. They are feverish with a mania of progress. They have grown so fast they cannot keep track of their own hobble-de-hoy, sprawling limbs. They are drunk with prosperity. In real estate alone, fortunes have come, as it were, overnight. All this San Antonio has not escaped. They will tell you with pardonable pride how this little cow town, where land wasn't worth two cents an acre outside the Mission walls, has jumped to be a metropolitan city of over 100,000; how it is the center of the great truck and irrigation farm district. ”

“ At San Antonio (St. Anthony) , in Monterey County, between Kings City and Jolón, Father Serra established the mission of San Antonio de Padua, July 14, 1771. In connection with its establishment, Palou tells a story that brings out one of the most marked characteristics of the venerable founder, his ardent enthusiasm: “They [the founding party] departed for the Santa Lucía Mountains, taking priests for the new mission, the required escort of soldiers, and all necessaries. ”

“ Claude B. Aniol, one of America’s foremost photographers, is eminently qualified by his intimate knowledge of San Antonio, his home, to portray in superb photographs this dynamic and busy, yet always picturesque city.
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“ The missions established earlier in the century prospered, expanded and then declined. In 1793-94 they were secularized and ceased to function as church settlements. Then followed a period of waning Spanish religious and political influence. In 1811 Mexico revolted against Spain and San Antonio was occupied several times, alternately by Mexican Revolutionists and Spanish Royalists.
In 1820 Moses Austin, a Connecticut Yankee living in Missouri, left his home and traveled to San Antonio, seeking permission of the Spanish authorities, still in power, to establish a colony of Americans in Texas. ”

“ When you are lost in the map of a country that is beyond the worn routes, trying to discover therein the place name which is the most secluded and inaccessible, if the map should happen to be that of South America, then your thought would naturally wander to the neighbourhood of San Antonio of the Rio Madeira. There you stay, to wonder what strange people and rocks and trees are to be found at San Antonio. It looks remote, even on the map. The sign which stands for the village is caught in a central loop of the mesh which is the river system of the Amazon forest. ”