Its elevated position gives it command of a fine prospect, at the same time securing it against the danger of inundation, when the river is in flood.
In architectural style the mission-building itself does not much differ from that of most Mexican country houses—called haciendas.
Usually a grand quadrangular structure, with an uncovered court in the centre, the patio; around which runs a gallery or corridor, communicating with the doors of the different apartments.
But few windows face outside; such as there are being casements, unglazed, but protected by a grille of iron bars set vertically—the reja. In the centre of its front façade is a double door, of gaol-like aspect, giving admittance to the passage-way, called saguan; this of sufficient capacity to admit a waggon with its load, intended for those grand old coaches that lumbered along our own highways in the days of Dick Turpin, and in which Sir Charles Grandison used luxuriously to ride. Vehicles of the exact size, and pattern, may be seen to this day crawling along the country roads of modern Mexico—relics of a grandeur long since gone.
The patio is paved with stone flags, or tesselated tiles; and, where a head of water can be had, a fountain plays in the centre, surrounded by orange-trees, or other evergreens, with flowering-plants in pots. To rearward of this inner court, a second passage-way gives entrance to another, and larger, if not so sumptuously arrayed; this devoted to stables, store-rooms, and other domestic offices. Still farther back is the huerta, or garden.
That attached to the ancient monastery is an enclosure of several acres in extent, surrounded by a high wall of adobes; made to look still higher from being crested with a palisade of the organ cactus. Filled with fruit trees and flowering shrubs, these once carefully cultivated, but for long neglected, now cover the walks in wild luxuriance. Under their shade, silently treading with sandalled feet, or reclining on rustic benches, the Texan friars used to spend their idle hours, quite as pleasantly as their British brethren of Tintern and Tewkesbury. Oft have the walls of the San Saba mission-house echoed their “ha, ha!” as they quaffed the choicest vintage of Xeres, and laughed at jests ribald as any ever perpetrated in a pot-house. Not heard, however, by the converted heathen under their care; nor intended to be. For them there were dwellings apart; a collection of rude hovels, styled the rancheria. These were screened from view by a thick grove of evergreen trees; the padres not relishing a too close contact with their half-naked neophytes, who were but their peons—in short their slaves. In point of fact, it was the feudal system of the Old World transported to the New; with the exception that the manorial lords were monks, and the villeins savage men. And the pretence at proselytising, with its mongrel mixture of Christianity and superstition, did not make this Transatlantic villeinage a whit less irksome to endure. Proof, that the red-skinned serfs required the iron hand of control is found in the presidio, or soldier’s barrack—standing close by—its ruin overlooking those of the rancheria. They who had been conquered by the Cross, still needed the sword to keep them in subjection, which, as we have seen, it finally failed to do.
Several of the huts still standing, and in a tolerable state of repair, have supplied shelter to the new settlers; most of whom have taken up their abode in them. They are only to serve as temporary residences, until better homes can be built. There is no time for this now. The spring is on, and the cotton-seed must be got into the ground, to the neglect of everything else.
Colonel Armstrong himself, with his daughters and domestics, occupies the old mission-building, which also gives lodgment to Luis Dupré and his belongings. For the young planter is now looked upon as a member of the Armstrong family, and it wants but a word from one in holy orders to make him really so. And such an one has come out with the colonists. The marriage ceremony is but deferred until the cotton-seed be safe under the soil. Then there will be a day of jubilee, such as has never been seen upon the San Saba; a fiesta, which in splendour will eclipse anything the Spanish monks, celebrated for such exhibitions, have ever got up, or attempted.
But “business before pleasure” is the adage of the hour; and, after a day or two given to rest, with the arrangement of household affairs, the real work of colonising commences. The little painted ploughs, transported from the States, are set to soiling their paint, by turning up the fertile clod of the San Saba valley, which has so long lain fallow; while the seed of the cotton-plant is scattered far and wide over hundreds—ay, thousands of acres.
Around the ancient mission is inaugurated a new life, with scenes of industry, stirring as those presided over by the padres.