o valuable for the rating of twenty acres to one steer.

All this and more you will see of modern San Antonio; but still if at
sundown you set out on a vagrant and solitary tour of the old Missions,
I think you will feel as I felt that it was the dauntless spirit of the
old regime that fired the blood of the moderns for the new day that is
dawning. I don't know why it is, but anything in life that is worth
having seems to demand service and sacrifice and, oftener than not, the
martyrdom of heroic and terrible defeat. Then, when you think that the
flag of the cause is trampled in a mire of bloodshed, phoenix-like
the cause rises on eagles' wings to new height, new daring, new victory.
It was so in Texas.

When you visit the Missions of San Antonio, go alone; or go with a
kindred spirit. Don't talk! Let the mysticism and wonder of it sink in
your soul! Soak yourself in the traditions of the Past. Let the dead
hand of the Past reach out and touch you. You will live over again the
heroism of the Alamo, the heroism that preceded the Alamo--that of the
Franciscans who tramped 300 leagues across the desert of Old Mexico to
establish these Missions; the heroism that preceded the
Franciscans--that of La Salle traveling thrice 300 leagues to establish
the cross on the Gulf of Mexico, and perishing by assassin's hand as he
turned on the backward march. You will see the iron cross to his memory
at Levaca. It was because La Salle, the Frenchman, found his way to the
Gulf, that Spain stirred up the viceroys of New Mexico to send sword and
cross over the desert to establish forts in the country of the Tejas
(Texans).

Do you realize what that means? When I cross the arid hills of the Rio
Grande, I travel in a car cooled by electric fans, with two or three
iced drinks between meals. These men marched--most of them on foot, the
cowled priests in sandals, the knights in armor plate from head to
heel--over cactus sands. Do you wonder that they died on the way? Do you
wonder that the marchers coming into the well-watered plains of the San
Antonio with festooned live oaks overhanging the green waters, paused
here and built their string of Missions of which the chief was the one
now known as "The Alamo"--the Mission of the cottonwood trees?

[Illustration: An excellent example of the entrance to an adobe house of
the Southwest, embodying the best traditions of this kind of
architecture]

Six different flags have flown over the land of t