Remember the Alamo | Page 3

annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning

machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois Benedictine
College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Scanned with Calera WordScan Plus 2.0 donated by: Calera
Recognition Systems 475 Potrero Sunnyvale, CA 94086
1-408-720-8300 [email protected] Mike Lynch
Remember the Alamo By AMELIA E. BARR

REMEMBER THE ALAMO ----
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. 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. And yet in spite of these fixed
attributes, San Antonio was a city penetrated with romantic elements,
and