s 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