In later years the rangers have served as a sort of state police. Many a stronghold of cattle thieves has been raided by them; many a nest of desperadoes has been broken up; many a bitter neighborhood feud has been settled.
At the present time (1896) there are about two hundred rangers in the service. They furnish their own horses, and receive forty dollars a month; their rations and their arms being supplied by the state.
Some of those noted for steady nerve and daring courage among the ranger captains of earlier and later times are Colonel “Rip” Ford, Lawrence Sullivan Ross (since governor of Texas, and called by his old comrades “Sul” Ross), Colonel “Buck” Barry, Lieutenant Chrisman, Sergeants J. B. Armstrong and L. P. Selker, and Captains Tom Wright, Jesse Lee Hall, and L. B. McNulty.
5. A CLOUD IN THE SKY.
In the spring of 1848 there appeared on the streets of Austin a young man wearing a costume which attracted much attention. It was composed of gray stockings and knee breeches, with a black velvet tunic and broad-brimmed, gray felt hat. The rather dashing-looking stranger was evidently French, but he called himself an Icarian. He was, in fact, on his way from New Braunfels, where he had been living, to Icaria, a new settlement near the Cross Timbers in Fannin County.
This settlement was founded by Etienne Cabet (Ca-bā), a Frenchman who dreamed of establishing a community where nobody would be rich and nobody would be poor, but all money and other property would be held in common. Devotion to women and children, honesty, and the ability and willingness to work for the good of the brotherhood were the chief rules of the fraternity. They numbered in France in 1847 many thousand persons of all classes.
Cabet obtained from the Peters Immigration Company in 1847 a million acres of land in North Texas. The land was given to him on condition that a settlement should be made upon it before the 1st of July, 1848. In January, 1848, the first cohort, numbering sixty-nine persons, embarked at Havre, France. They arrived at Shreveport, Louisiana, the following April. From there they marched on foot to their chosen home in Texas, carrying firearms, household goods, and provisions.
“Oh, if you could see Icaria!” they presently wrote back to the brotherhood in France. “It is an Eden. The forests are superb; the vegetation rich and varied. We have horses, cows, pigs, and chickens in abundance.... Many Texans come to see us. They are good-natured and very honest. We camp and sleep out of doors. We lock up nothing and are never robbed.”[36]
Houses were built and fields ploughed and planted. By midsummer the Icarians in their cosy hamlet were on the lookout for the second cohort of colonists. But before it arrived the cholera broke out in Icaria. Many of the settlers died; nearly all those who were left abandoned their homes in a panic and returned to New Orleans, where Cabet himself joined them with several hundred recruits from France. A new and more fortunate Icarian settlement was finally made in Missouri.
A few years later (1853) a procession, also composed of French emigrants, passed along Main Street in Houston. They had just landed from the steamboat Eclipse on the bayou at the foot of the street. At their head walked a tall gentleman in a velvet coat and three-cornered hat. He carried a drawn sword in his hand, and the tricolored flag of France floated above his head. His long white hair streamed over his shoulders. The whole company, men, women, and children, sung the Marseillaise hymn as they marched along.