Page:Boissonnas, Un Vaincu, English, 1875.djvu/37

 vitalizing influence on them, the decision they made and kept, to be men of duty.

At the same time, Colonel Lee was rebuilding the school′s indoor arena, and undertook a major enterprise -- the beautiful road which, cut into pure rock, goes down from the promontory on which the school is built, to the banks of the Hudson.

Nominated in 1855 as Commander of a Cavalry Regiment, he left for Texas, a territory newly detached from Mexico, to protect it′s frontier against the Indians. The results of the recent war had been practically nil. The Mexican government′s promises remained unfulfilled, and it had become obvious that the Americans could only count on themselves to protect their nationals.

The United States government was, and is still obliged, to maintain all along the zone occupied by the Indians, a line of separate Forts rather like our blockhouses in Algeria, each one of which is manned by a Detail of regular soldiers. The crude walls of these small Forts, made of tree trunks, serve as shelters for the families of settlers when they are threatened and eventually have to sustain real sieges. Sometimes those small garrisons are called to help isolated houses submitted to an attack. Often, they arrive too late and can only witness the murders or destructions already