Part 12 (1/2)

If you want to plunge into America's Egypt, there are as many ways to go as you have moods. You explain that the ocean voyage is half the attraction to European travel. There may be a difference of opinion on that, as I know people who would like to believe that the Atlantic could be bridged; but if you are keen on an ocean voyage, you can reach the Egypt of America by boat to Florida, then west by rail; or by boat straight to any of the Texas harbors. By way of Florida, you can take your fill of the historic and antique and the picturesque in St.

Augustine and Pensacola and New Orleans; and if there are any yarns of rarer flavor in all the resorts of Europe than in the old quarters of these three places, I have never heard of them. You can drink of the spring of the elixir of life in St. Augustine, and lose yourself in the trenches of old Fort Barrancas at Pensacola, and wander at will in the old French town of New Orleans. Each place was once a p.a.w.n in the gambles of European statesmen. Each has heard the clang of armed knights, the sword in one hand, the cross in the other. Each has seen the pirate fleet with death's head on the flag at the masthead come tacking up the bays, sometimes to be shattered and sunk by cannon shot from the fort bastions. Sometimes the fort itself was scuttled by the buccaneers; once, at least, at Fort Barrancas, it suffered loot at terrible, riotous, drunken hands, when a Spanish officer's daughter who was captured for ransom succeeded in plunging into the sea within sight of her watching father.

But whether you enter the Egypt of America by rail overland, or by sea, San Antonio is the gateway city from the south to the land of play and mystery. It is to the Middle West what Quebec is to Canada, what Cairo is to Egypt--the gateway, the meeting place of old and new, of Latin and Saxon, of East and West, of North and South. Atmosphere? Physically, the atmosphere is champagne: spiritually, you have not gone ten paces from the station before you feel a flavor as of old wine. There are the open Spanish plazas riotous with bloom flanked by Spanish-Moorish ruins flush on the pavement, with skysc.r.a.per hotels that are the last word in modernity. Live oaks heavy with Spanish moss hang over sleepy streams that come from everywhere and meander nowhere. You see a squad of soldiers from Fort Sam Houston wheeling in measured tread around a square (only there isn't anything absolutely square in all San Antonio) and they have hardly gone striding out of sight before you see a Mexican burro trotting to market with a load of hay tied on its back. A motor comes b.u.mping over the roads--such roads as only the antique can boast--and if it is fiesta time, or cowboy celebration, you are apt to see cowboys cutting such figure eights in the air as a motor cannot execute on antique pavement.

You enter a hotel and imagine you are in the Plaza, New York, or the Ritz, London; but stay! The frieze above the marble walls isn't gilt; and it isn't tapestry. The frieze is a long panel in bronze _alto-relievo_. I think it is a testimonial to San Antonio's sense of the fitness of things that that frieze is not of Roman gladiators, or French gardens with beringed ladies and tame fawns. It is a frieze of the cowboys taking a stampeding herd up the long trail--drifting and driving but held together by a rough fellow in top boots and sombrero; and the rotunda has a frieze of cowboys because that three million-dollar hotel was built out of ”cow” money. Old and new, past and present, Saxon and Latin, North and South, East and West--that is San Antonio. You can never forget it for a minute. It is such a s.h.i.+fting panorama as you could only get from traveling thousands of miles elsewhere, or comparing a hundred Remington drawings. San Antonio is a curious combination of Remington and Alma Tadema in real life; and I don't know anywhere else in the world you can get it. There are three such huge hotels in San Antonio besides a score of lesser ones, to take care of the 30,000 tourists who come from the Middle West to winter in San Antonio; but remember that while 30,000 seems a large number of tourists for one place, that is only one-tenth the number of Americans who yearly see Europe.

And never for a moment can you forget that as Cairo is the gateway to Eastern travel, so San Antonio is on the road to Old Mexico and all the former Spanish possessions of the South. It was here that Madero's band of revolutionists lived and laid the plans that overthrew Diaz. Long ago, before the days of railway, it was here that the long caravans of mule trains used to come with, silver and gold from the mines of Old Mexico. It was here the highwaymen and roughs and toughs and sc.u.m of the earth used to lie in wait for the pa.s.sing bullion; and it was here the Texas Rangers came with short, quick, sharp shrift for rustlers and robbers. There is one corner in San Antonio where you can see a Mission dating back to the early seventeen hundreds, and not a stone's throw away, one of the most famous gambling joints of the wildest days of the wild Southwest--the site of the old Silver King, where cowboys and miners from the South used to come in ”to clean out” their earnings of a year, sometimes to ride horses over faro tables, or pot-shot rows of champagne. A man had ”to smile” when he called his ”pardner” pet names in the Silver King; or there would be crackle of more than champagne corks. Men would duck for hiding. A body would be dragged out, sand spread on the floor, and the games went on morning, noon and night. The Missions are crumbling ruins. So is the Silver King. Frontiersmen will tell you regretfully of the good old days forever gone, when the night pa.s.sed but dully if the cowboys did not shoot up all the saloons and ”hurdle” the gaming tables.

Yesterday, it was cowboy and mines in San Antonio. To-day, it is polo and tourist; and the transition is a natural growth. One would hate to think of the risks of the Long Trail, for miners from Old Mexico to Fort Leavenworth, for cowboys from Fort Worth to Wyoming and St. Louis, and not see the risks rewarded in fortunes to these trail makers. The cowboy and miner of the olden days--the cowboy and miner who survived, that is--are the capitalists taking their pleasure in San Antonio to-day. It was natural that the cow pony bred to keeping its feet in mid-air, or on earth, should develop into the finest type of polo pony ever known. For years, the polo clubs of the North, Lenox, Long Island, Milbrook, have made a regular business of scouring Texas for polo ponies. Horses giving promise of good points would be picked up at $80, $100, $150. They would then be rounded on a ranch and trained. San Antonio is situated almost 700 feet up on a high, clear plateau rimmed by blue ridges in the distance. Recently, a polo ground of 3,200 acres has been laid out; and the polo clubs of the North are to be invited to San Antonio for the winter fiestas. As Fort Sam Houston boasts one of the best polo clubs of the South, compet.i.tion is likely to attract the sportsmen from far and near.

You know how it is in all these new Western cities. They are feverish with a mania of progress. They have grown so fast they cannot keep track of their own hobble-de-hoy, sprawling limbs. They are drunk with prosperity. In real estate alone, fortunes have come, as it were, overnight. All this San Antonio has not escaped. They will tell you with pardonable pride how this little cow town, where land wasn't worth two cents an acre outside the Mission walls, has jumped to be a metropolitan city of over 100,000; how it is the center of the great truck and irrigation farm district. Fort Sam Houston always has 700 or 800 soldiers in garrison, and sometimes has as many as 4,000; and when army maneuvers take place, there is an immense reservation outside the city where as many as 20,000 men can practice mimic war. The day of two cents or even $20 an acre land round San Antonio is forever past. Land under the ditch is too 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 peris.h.i.+ng by a.s.sa.s.sin'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?

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 the Tejas: the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate, the Union. In such a struggle for ascendancy, needless to tell, much blood was shed righteously and unrighteously; but of the battle fought at the Alamo, no justification need be given. It is part of American history, but it is the kind of history that in other nations goes to make battle hymns. Details are in every school book. Santa Ana, the newly risen Mexican dictator, had ordered the 30,000 Americans who lived in Texas, to disarm. Sam Houston, Crockett, Bowie, Travis, had sprung to arms with a call that rings down to history yet:

”Fellow citizens and compatriots,” wrote Travis from the doomed Alamo Mission, to Houston and the other leaders outside, ”I am besieged by a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Ana. I have sustained a continued bombardment for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man.... The garrison is to be put to the sword if the place is taken. I have answered the summons with a cannon shot and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender, nor retreat. I call on you in the name of liberty, and of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all despatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily, and will no doubt increase to 3,000 or 4,000 in four or five days. Though this call may be neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who forgets not what is due to his own honor and that of his country--Victory or Death!

W. Barrett Travis Lieut.-Col. Commanding.”

In the fort with Travis were 180 men under Bowie and Crockett. The siege began on Feb. 23, 1836, and ended on March 6th. Besides the frontiersmen in the fort were two women, two children and two slaves. The Mission was arranged in a great quadrangle fifty-four by 154 yards with _acequias_ or irrigation ditches both to front and rear. The garrison had succeeded in getting inside the walls about thirty bushels of corn and eighty beef cattle; so there was no danger of famine. The big courtyard was in the rear. The convent projected out in front of the courtyard. To the left angle of the convent was the chapel or Mission of the Alamo. Santa Ana had come across the desert with 5,000 men. To the demand for surrender, Travis answered with a cannon shot. The Mexican leader then hung the red flag above his camp and ordered the band to play ”no quarter.” For eight days, sh.e.l.ls came hurtling inside the walls incessantly, dawn to dark, dark to dawn. Just at sunset on March 3rd, there was a bell. Travis collected his men and gave them their choice of surrendering and being shot, or cutting their way out through the besieging line. The besiegers at this time consisted of 2,500 infantrymen bunched close to the walls of the Alamo--too close to be shot from above, and 2,500 cavalry and infantry back on the Plaza and encircling the Mission to cut off all avenue of escape.

Travis drew a line on the ground with his sword.

”Every man who will die with me, come across that line! Who will be first? March!”

Every man leaped over the line but Bowie, who was ill on a cot bed.

”Boys, move my cot over the line,” he said.

At four o'clock next morning, the siege was resumed. The bugle blew a single blast. With picks, crowbars and ladders, the Mexicans closed in.

The besieged waited breathlessly. The Mexicans placed the ladders and began scaling. The sharpshooters inside the walls waited till the heads appeared above the walls--then fired. As the top man fell back, the one beneath on the ladder stepped in the dead man's place. Then the Americans clubbed their guns and fought hand to hand. By that, the Mexicans knew that ammunition was exhausted and the defenders few. The walls were scaled and battered down first in a far corner of the convent yard. Behind the chapel door, piles of sand had been stacked. From the yard, the Texans were driven to the convent, from the convent to the chapel. Travis fell shot at the breach in the yard wall. Bowie was bayoneted on the cot where he lay. Crockett was clubbed to death just outside the chapel door to the left. By nine o'clock, no answering shot came from the Alamo. The doors were rammed and rushed. Not a Texan survived. Two women, two children and a couple of slaves were pulled out of hiding from chancel and stalls. These were sent across to the main camp. The bodies of the 182 heroes were piled in a pyramid with f.a.gots; and fired. So ended the Battle of the Alamo, one of the most terrible defeats and heroic defenses in American history. It is unnecessary to relate that Sam Houston exacted from the Mexicans on the battlefield of San Jacinto a terrible punishment for this defeat. Captured and killed, his toll of defeated Mexicans down at Houston came to almost 1,700.

Such is the story of one of San Antonio's Missions. One other has a tale equally tragic; but all but two are falling to utter ruin. I don't know whether it would be greater desecration to lay hand on them and save them, or let them fall to dust. It was nightfall when I went to the three on the outskirts of the city. Two have little left but the walls and the towers. A third is still used as place of wors.h.i.+p by a little settlement of Mexicans. The slant light of sunset came through the darkened, vacant windows, the tiers of weathered stalls, the empty, twin-towered belfries. You could see where the well stood, the bake house, the school. Shrubbery planted by the monks has grown wild in the courtyards; but you can still call up the picture of the cowled priests chanting prayers. The Missions are ruins; but the hope that animated them, the fire, the heroism, the dauntless faith, still burn in Texas blood as the sunset flame s.h.i.+nes through the dismantled windows.

CHAPTER XIV

CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA

If someone should tell you of a second Grand Canon gashed through wine-colored rocks in the purple light peculiar to the uplands of very high mountains--a second Grand Canon, where lived a race of little men not three feet tall, where wild turkeys were domesticated as household birds and every man's door was in the roof and his doorstep a ladder that he carried up after him--you would think it pure imagination, wouldn't you? The Lilliputians away out in ”Gulliver's Travels,” or something like that? And if your narrator went on about magicians who danced with live rattlesnakes hanging from their teeth and belted about their waists, and played with live fire without being burned, and walked up the faces of precipices as a fly walks up a wall--you would think him rehearsing some Robinson Crusoe tale about two generations too late to be believed.

Yet there is a second Grand Canon not a stone's throw from everyday tourist travel, wilder in game life and rock formation if not so large, with prehistoric caves on its precipice walls where sleeps a race of little mummied men behind doors and windows barely large enough to admit a half-grown white child. Who were they? No one knows. When did they live? So long ago that they were cave men, stone age men; so long ago that neither history nor tradition has the faintest echo of their existence. Where did they live? No, it was not Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia. If it were, we would know about them. As it happens, this second Grand Canon is only in plain, nearby, home-staying America; so when boys of the Forest Service pulled Little Zeke out of his gypsum and pumice stone dust and measured him up and found him only twenty-three inches long, though the hair sticking to the skull was gray and the teeth were those of an adult--as it happened in only matter-of-fact, commonplace America, poor Little Zeke couldn't get shelter. They trounced his little dry bones round Silver City, New Mexico, for a few months. Then they boxed him up and s.h.i.+pped him away to be stored out of sight in the cellars of the Smithsonian, at Was.h.i.+ngton. As Zeke has been asleep since the Ice Age, or about ten to eight thousand years B. C., it doesn't make very much difference to him; but one wonders what in the world New Mexico was doing allowing one of the most wonderful specimens of a prehistoric dwarf race ever found to be s.h.i.+pped out of the country.