"Oh!" the maiden exclaimed, as she fell on a bench, and melted into tears; "Oh! That demon is properly christened the Jaguar! He has a tiger's heart in his bosom."
She buried her face in her hands, and broke out into sobs.
At the same moment the rapid gallop of a retreating horse was heard.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
CARMELA.
Before we continue our story, it is indispensable for us to give our readers certain important and indispensable details about facts that have to come.
Among the provinces of the vast territory of New Spain, there is one, the most eastern of all, whose real value the Government of the Viceroys has constantly ignored. This ignorance was kept up by the Mexican Republic, which, at the period of the proclamation of Independence, did not think it worthy of being formed into a separate state, and, without dreaming of what might happen at a later date, negligently allowed it to be colonized by the North Americans, who even at that period seemed infected by that fever of encroachment and aggrandizement which has now become a species of endemic mania among these worthy citizens—we refer to Texas.
This magnificent country is one of the most fortunately situated in Mexico; territorially regarded, it is immense, no country is better watered, for considerable rivers pour into the sea, their waters swollen by countless streams which fertilize this country, as they traverse it in every direction; and these currents and rivers being deeply imbedded, never form those wide expanses of water by their overflow, which in other countries are transformed into fetid marshes.
The climate of Texas is healthy, and exempt from those frightful diseases which have given such a sinister celebrity to certain countries of the New World.
The natural borders of Texas are the Sabina on the East, Red River on the north, to the west a chain of lofty mountains, which enters vast prairies, and the Rio Bravo del Norte, and lastly, from the mouth of the latter river to that of the Sabina, the Gulf of Mexico.