"The Mexicans were severely punished for their cruelty to the Texans," said Fred, "and were probably sorry for their butcheries at Goliad and the Alamo when they sat down to think of the war and how it turned out.
A GROUP OF TEXAN HUNTERS.
"The responsibility for those butcheries rests rather upon General Santa Anna than on the officers and soldiers who executed his orders. He started out in a war of extermination, and there is abundant evidence that his officers loathed the work they had to perform. One of them, writing from Goliad at the time of the massacre of Colonel Fannin and his men, said, 'This day, Palm Sunday, has been to me a day of heart-felt sorrow. What an awful scene did the field present when the prisoners were executed and fell in heaps, and what spectator could view it without horror!' It has been said that the feeble resistance that Santa Anna's men made at the battle of San Jacinto was in consequence of the willingness of officers and soldiers to be captured so that the terrible war could come to an end."
"Texas is now a very prosperous State," continued the Doctor; "the value of its taxable property is nearly seven hundred millions of dollars, and some authorities say it is more, and it has seven millions of cattle, ten millions of sheep, and horses and mules in proportion. By the census of 1880 it had a population of more than one and a half millions, and it is probable that 1890 will give it more than two millions. Its area would make five States as large as New York, thirty-three as large as Massachusetts, and two hundred and twelve of the size of Rhode Island. That it has changed greatly from the days before the annexation, and is favorable to peace and good order, is shown by its liberal appropriation for schools, its laws relative to the sale of intoxicating drinks, the fines it imposes for carrying pistols and bowie-knives, and its penalties for using them."
There was further conversation about the south-west and its peculiarities, when the train reached the frontier and attention was turned to Mexico and the new land that they were about to visit.
