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 scum of the earth used to lie in wait for the passing 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 passed 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, competition 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 régime 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, phœnix-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?
An excellent example of the entrance to an adobe house of the Southwest, embodying the best traditions of this kind of architecture