ering-plants in pots. To
rearward of this inner court, a second passage-way gives entrance to
another, and larger, if not so sumptuously arrayed; this devoted to
stables, store-rooms, and other domestic offices. Still farther back is
the _huerta_, or garden.

That attached to the ancient monastery is an enclosure of several acres
in extent, surrounded by a high wall of _adobes_; made to look still
higher from being crested with a palisade of the organ cactus. Filled
with fruit trees and flowering shrubs, these once carefully cultivated,
but for long neglected, now cover the walks in wild luxuriance. Under
their shade, silently treading with sandalled feet, or reclining on
rustic benches, the Texan friars used to spend their idle hours, quite
as pleasantly as their British brethren of Tintern and Tewkesbury. Oft
have the walls of the San Saba mission-house echoed their "ha, ha!" as
they quaffed the choicest vintage of Xeres, and laughed at jests ribald
as any ever perpetrated in a pot-house. Not heard, however, by the
converted heathen under their care; nor intended to be. For them there
were dwellings apart; a collection of rude hovels, styled the
_rancheria_. These were screened from view by a thick grove of
evergreen trees; the _padres_ not relishing a too close contact with
their half-naked neophytes, who were but their _peons_--in short their
slaves. In point of fact, it was the feudal system of the Old World
transported to the New; with the exception that the manorial lords were
monks, and the _villeins_ savage men. And the pretence at
proselytising, with its mongrel mixture of Christianity and
superstition, did not make this Transatlantic _villeinage_ a whit less
irksome to endure. Proof, that the red-skinned serfs required the iron
hand of control is found in the _presidio_, or soldier's barrack--
standing close by--its ruin overlooking those of the _rancheria_. They
who had been conquered by the Cross, still needed the sword to keep them
in subjection, which, as we have seen, it finally failed to do.

Several of the huts still standing, and in a tolerable state of repair,
have supplied shelter to the new settlers; most of whom have taken up
their abode in them. They are only to serve as temporary residences,
until better homes can be built. There is no time for this now. The
spring is on, and the cotton-seed must be got into the ground, to the
neglect of everything else.

Colonel Armstrong hims