Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/563

Rh Mexican confederation. Then came the inevitable trouble between the hardy and independent citizens of this remote province and the military rulers sent to govern them from Mexico. After the massacre of the Alamo, in 1836, the Mexicans lost men, and courage, and territory, until the last was finally entirely wrested from them, and the limits of Old Mexico fixed at the Rio Grande, instead of the Rio Sabinas.

But, except to pause a moment to gather up these scattered threads of history that connect San Antonio with the country we are about to visit, we have no cause to linger here; our destination is Mexico. Let us return to the Rio Grande. The Mexican monks pushed their religious conquests into the Indian country, founding fortified posts as far east as San Antonio; but there was no permanent settlement on the Rio Grande until 1737, when the Presidio of Laredo was established. Herds of cattle and horses gradually extended over the intervening country, and to the south and west; but at the breaking up of the colonies, in 1820, these became the prey of the Indians, or ran wild, and gave rise to great droves of mustangs, which were in later years found grazing here in countless numbers.

So complete became the desolation of this southwestern section that, when General Taylor marched with his army from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in 1846, it is said that not an inhabitant existed there. It was not till 1850 that the repopulating of this portion of Texas commenced, when the mustangs were caught or killed, and the foundations laid for that great enterprise of stock-raising, to which alone this arid region is adapted. Over this apparently worthless territory the stock-raisers of Texas are now quarrelling bitterly, and running fences in every direction, one owner alone having above one hundred miles of barbed wire around his ranch.

Along the entire length of the treacherous Rio Grande, there are few natural passes through the sterile hills that guard its banks. Laredo is situated at one of these, and is the objective point for the great railways, which are shooting their steel shafts across the Border, and which take no heed of men or towns, but seek for passes with natural advantages. It is the largest town