Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 5

by Various

Approaching the house, we saw the whole garrison assembled before the door. It consisted of a dozen dwarfish, spindle-shanked Mexican soldiers, none of them so big or half so strong as American boys of fifteen, and whom I would have backed a single Kentucky woodsman, armed with a riding-whip, to have driven to the four winds of heaven. These heroes all sported tremendous beards, whiskers, and mustaches, and had a habit of knitting their brows, in the endeavour, as we supposed, to look fierce and formidable. They were crowding round a table of rough planks, and playing a game at cards, in which they were so deeply engrossed that they took no notice of our approach. Their officer, however, came out of the house to meet us with a friendly greeting.

Captain Cotton, formerly editor of the Mexican Gazette, now civil and military superintendent of Galveston, customs-director, harbour-master, and tavern-keeper, and a Yankee to boot, seemed to trouble his head—to the credit of his good sense be it said—much less about his various dignities and titles (of which he had more than there were soldiers in his garrison) than about his capital French and Spanish wines, which, it is to be presumed, he laid in duty free. As to the soldiers, in all my life I never saw such wretched-looking, shrivelled dwarfs. I could not help fancying them grotesque elves or goblins, transported thither by some old sorcerer’s power. We were never tired of staring at them and at the country, which also had something supernatural in its aspect. It was like an everlasting billiard-table, without an end. It is a strange feeling, I can tell you, after being three weeks at sea, to run into a harbour which is no harbour, and to land upon a shore which is only half land, and which seems each moment about to roll away in waves from under your feet. Our fellow-passengers, several of whom had now landed and joined us, gazed about them as puzzled and bewildered as we were, and hastened into the blockhouse with a speed which showed them to be assailed by the same uneasy feeling as ourselves. Looking out from the blockhouse, the interminable expanse of meadow and ocean was blended into one vast plain, out of which the building rose like a diminutive island. It was with a sensation of real relief that we once more found ourselves on board our schooner.

It took us three full days to ascend the river Brazos to the town of Brazoria, a distance of only thirty miles. On the first day, nothing but the everlasting meadow was to be seen on either hand; but, on the second, we got nearer to islands: the pasture became a park, dotted with magnificent groups of trees. Not a sign of man was visible in this stupendous park—a boundless ocean of grass and foliage. An ocean of this kind has a far more powerful effect upon those who for the first time wander through its solitudes than has an ocean of water. We saw this exemplified in our travelling companions, land-seekers like ourselves, with the sole difference that, not being overburdened with the circulating medium, they had come without scrip. They were by no means of the class of sentimental travellers—nothing of the Yorick about them—but, on the contrary, were wild, rough fellows, who had played all sorts of mad pranks during the three weeks’ voyage. Here, however, they all, without exception, became quiet—nay, sedate and serious. The very wildest of them, and some of them really were as rude and desperate a lot as ever roamed the world round in search of adventures—grew taciturn, and gave utterance to none of the coarse oaths and horrible blasphemies with which, when at sea, they had frequently disgusted us. They behaved like people who had just entered a church. All their countenances wore an expression of gravity and awe. And, in a certain sense, we surely might be said to have entered one of God’s temples; for what more noble temple could be erected in his honour than the magnificent scene around us! All was so still, and solemn, and majestic! Forest and meadow, trees and grass, all so pure and fresh, as if just from the hand of the mighty and eternal Artificer. No trace of man’s sinful hand, but all the beautiful, immaculate work of God!

Fifteen miles above the mouth of the river Brazos, we entered the first forest. Sycamores, and, further on, pecan-trees, waved on either hand over the water. We saw a herd of deer, and a large flock of wild turkeys, both of which, already tolerably shy, took to flight at our appearance. The quality of the land was, as will be easily imagined, the point to which our attention was chiefly directed. On the coast we had found it light and sandy, with a very thin crust of good soil, but without any signs of swamp or slime; further from the sea, the crust or fertile surface increased in thickness from one to four—eight—twelve—at last fifteen—and, at Brazoria, twenty feet over the bed of sand and loam. As yet we had seen nothing like a hillock or a stone; and indeed it would have been very difficult in a district a hundred miles broad and long, to have found a stone as big as a pigeon’s egg. On the other hand, there was wood in plenty for houses and fences; so we had no cause for anxiety in that respect. Our hopes grew brighter each mile that we advanced.

On our arrival at Brazoria, however, those sanguine hopes received a cruel blow. At the time I speak of—namely, in the year 1832—Brazoria was an important town—for Texas, that is to say—consisting of above thirty houses, three of which were of brick, three of boards, and the remainder of logs, all thoroughly American, with the streets arranged in the American manner, in straight lines and at right angles to each other. The only objection to the place was, that in the spring, at the season of the floods, it was all under water; but the worthy Brazorians overlooked this little inconvenience, in consideration of the inexhaustible fertility of the soil. It was early in March when we arrived, but we found already an abundance of new potatoes, beans, peas, and the most delicious artichokes that ever rejoiced an epicure. But we also found something else, much less agreeable to my friend and myself, and that was, that our scrip was not quite so good as it might be, and—like much other scrips, past, present, and to come—bore a stronger resemblance to waste paper than to bank-notes. Our unpleasant doubts became a fatal certainty on the arrival of William Austin, son of Colonel Austin. He gave us to read the report of the proceedings of the Mexican congress, after perusing which, we were within an ace of lighting our cigars with our certificates.

It appeared that, in the year 1824, the Mexican Congress had passed an act, having for its object the encouragement of emigration from the United States to Texas. In consequence of this act, an agreement was entered into with contractors—or empresarios, as they call them in Mexico—who bound themselves to bring a certain number of settlers into Texas within a given time, at their own charges, and without any expense to the Mexican government. On the other hand, the Mexican government had engaged to furnish land to these emigrants at the rate of five square leagues to every hundred families; but to this agreement the special condition was attached, that all settlers should be, or become, Roman Catholics. Failing this, and until they gave satisfactory proofs of their belonging to the Church of Rome, the validity of their claims to the land was not recognised, and they were liable any day to be turned out of the country at the point of the bayonet.

Of all this, the New York “Galveston-Bay-and-Texas-Land-Company,” like smart Yankees as they were, had wisely said not a word to us, but had sold us the land with the assurance that it had been placed at their disposal by the Mexican government, on the sole condition of their importing into it, within the year, a certain number of settlers. Such was the tenor of their verbal and written declarations, such the tenor of the scrip; trusting to which, we had set out on our wild-goose-chase. Clear it now was that we had been duped and taken in; equally evident that the Roman Catholic Mexican government would have nothing to say to us heretics.

This information threw us into no small perplexity. Our Yankee friends at Brazoria, however, laughed at our dilemma, and told us that we were only in the same plight as hundreds of our countrymen, who had come to Texas in total ignorance of this condition, but who had not the less taken possession of their land and settled there; that they themselves were amongst the number; and that, although it was just as likely they would turn negroes as Roman Catholics, they had no idea of being turned out of their houses and plantations; that, at any rate, if the Mexicans tried it, they had their rifles with them, and should be apt, they reckoned, to burn powder before they allowed themselves to be kicked off such an almighty fine piece of soil. So, after a while, we began to think, that as we had paid our money and come so far, we might do as others had done before us—occupy our land and wait the course of events. The next day we each bought a horse, or mustang, as they call them there, which animals were selling at Brazoria for next to nothing, and rode out into the prairie to look for a convenient spot to settle.

These mustangs are small horses, rarely above fourteen hands high, and are descended from the Spanish breed introduced by the original conquerors of the country. During the three centuries that have elapsed since the conquest of Mexico, they have increased and multiplied to an extraordinary extent, and are to be found in vast droves in the Texan prairies, although they now begin to be somewhat scarcer. They are taken with the lasso, concerning which instrument or weapon I will here say a word or two, notwithstanding that it has been often described.