. Burnett was elected Governor, and Houston felt that he
could now give his whole attention to military affairs.

The seat of Government was removed to Harrisburg, a small place on the
Buffalo Bayou; and Houston was sure that this change would cause Santa
Anna to diverge from his route to Nacogdoches. He dispatched orders to
the men scattered up and down the Brazos from Washington to Fort Bend--a
distance of eighty miles--to join him on the march to Harrisburg, and he
struck his own camp at the time he had specified.

In less than twenty-four hours they reached San Felipe, a distance of
twenty-eight miles. The suffering of the women and children on that
march can never be told. Acts of heroism on the part of the men and of
fortitude on the part of the women that are almost incredible, marked
every step of the way. The Senora sat in her wagon, speechless, and lost
in a maze of melancholy anguish. She did not seem to heed want, or
cold, or wet, or the utter misery of her surroundings. Her soul
had concentrated all its consciousness upon the strand of hair she
continually smoothed through her fingers. Dr. Worth, in his capacity of
physician, accompanied the flying families, and he was thus able to pay
some attention to his distraught wife; but she answered nothing he said
to her. If she looked at him, her eyes either flamed with anger, or
expressed something of the terror to be seen in the eyes of a hunted
animal. It was evident that her childish intelligence had seized upon
him as the most obvious cause of all her loss and misery.

The condition of a wife so beloved almost broke his heart. The tragic
death of his dear son was not so hard to endure as this living woe at
his side. And when they reached San Felipe and found it in ashes, a
bitter cry of hopeless suffering came from every woman's lips. They
had thought to find there a little food, and a day's sheltered
resting-place. Even Antonia's brave soul fainted, at the want and
suffering around her. She had gold, but it could not buy bread for the
little ones, weeping with hunger and terrified by the fretfulness of
mothers suffering the pangs of want and in the last stage of human
weariness.

It was on this night Houston wrote: "I will do the best I can; but be
assured the fame of Jackson could never compensate me for my anxiety and
mental pain." And yet, when he was told that a blind woman and her
seven children had been passed by, and did not know the enemy were
ap