meantime the army was engaged
in all the duties pertaining to the officer and the soldier. Twice,
that I remember, small trains were sent from Corpus Christi, with
cavalry escorts, to San Antonio and Austin, with paymasters and funds to
pay off small detachments of troops stationed at those places. General
Taylor encouraged officers to accompany these expeditions. I
accompanied one of them in December, 1845. The distance from Corpus
Christi to San Antonio was then computed at one hundred and fifty miles.
Now that roads exist it is probably less. From San Antonio to Austin we
computed the distance at one hundred and ten miles, and from the latter
place back to Corpus Christi at over two hundred miles. I know the
distance now from San Antonio to Austin is but little over eighty miles,
so that our computation was probably too high.

There was not at the time an individual living between Corpus Christi
and San Antonio until within about thirty miles of the latter point,
where there were a few scattering Mexican settlements along the San
Antonio River. The people in at least one of these hamlets lived
underground for protection against the Indians. The country abounded in
game, such as deer and antelope, with abundance of wild turkeys along
the streams and where there were nut-bearing woods. On the Nueces,
about twenty-five miles up from Corpus Christi, were a few log cabins,
the remains of a town called San Patricio, but the inhabitants had all
been massacred by the Indians, or driven away.

San Antonio was about equally divided in population between Americans
and Mexicans. From there to Austin there was not a single residence
except at New Braunfels, on the Guadalupe River. At that point was a
settlement of Germans who had only that year come into the State. At
all events they were living in small huts, about such as soldiers would
hastily construct for temporary occupation. From Austin to Corpus
Christi there was only a small settlement at Bastrop, with a few farms
along the Colorado River; but after leaving that, there were no
settlements except the home of one man, with one female slave, at the
old town of Goliad. Some of the houses were still standing. Goliad had
been quite a village for the period and region, but some years before
there had been a Mexican massacre, in which every inhabitant had been
killed or driven away. This, with the massacre of the prisoners in the
Alamo, San Antonio, about the s