GOV. HAMILTON--THE THIRTY NEROS--THE OLD GERMAN AND HIS WIFE--THE
FIGHT WITH INDIANS--A NATIVE TEXAN'S OPINION OF GERMANS.
Before we left Austin Governor Hamilton sent out a strong detachment
to the adjoining county on the north, and had arrested sixteen members
of the vigilance committee, whose whole number was thirty, and whose
business had been during the war to hunt up and kill Union men. The
sixteen were brought to Austin and lodged in prison to await trial.
Eight of them turned States' evidence, and testified that the thirty
had killed, in their own county, exactly their own number. They showed
the officers where fourteen of the victims were buried, in one place.
We were invited to dine one day with a friend at the house of their
legal counsel. From him we gathered the facts. He said that he
considered their defense desperate to the last degree; but he was bound
by his professional oath and honor to see that they had a just and
impartial trial.
One of the victims of the fiendish malice of these thirty Neros was an
old, white-haired German, eighty years of age, who was suspected of
Union proclivities. They went to the house where the old German and his
aged wife were living together alone, in peace and quiet, and made the
pretext to the old lady that they wanted her husband as an important
witness in some case, which partly quieted her fears. They placed the
old man in the saddle, and ordered him to ride in front. As he was
passing out the gate of the front yard, the villains shot the old man
in the back, and he fell to the earth dead! The old lady standing in
her door-way saw it all, gave one long, wild scream, and fell forward
to the ground! The wretches left, nor let the grass grow under their
feet till safe in their hiding places.
The thunderbolt of insanity had passed through the soul of the wretched
old wife, and when we left Austin she was a hopeless maniac in the
Insane asylum. We wish to say that these things were generally unknown
outside the localities where they transpired during the war.
To the northwest of Austin, a hundred miles away, we heard the report
that a serious fight had occurred between the State Militia and two or
three hundred Indians, who had come down from the mountains to steal
horses and cattle. That the Indians fought in ambush, and made many
of the whites bite the dust. But when the lying spirit of the war was
over, the truth came out that these Indians were a colony of German
refugees fleeing from Texas persecution to Mexico. But few of them ever
reached there.
The German population of Texas were generally understood to have Union
sympathies, avid were therefore cordially hated by original Texans. We
were riding one day into the country with a genuine Texan, and coming
to a heavy German settlement, he called our attention to their fine
farms and substantial improvements, and said, "See the Germans squatted
everywhere on the best lands in our State. I'll tell you what I would
do if in my power. I would compel them to leave the rich land and go to
the sand hills and sand prairies. I don't think they have any business
on these lands, and right under the noses of the better class of
citizens."
This was an occasion when we regarded the "discretion" of thinking
without speaking "the better part of valor." But we confess that we
never felt more disgraced by the company we were in. We passed out to
his plantation. His house was scarcely fit for a horse-stable, and
everything was in filth and confusion in and out of doors. We thought
the meanest German in the settlement his king in industry, neatness and
thrift. One of the most flourishing towns in Texas is New Braunfels.
It is thoroughly German in its original settlement and growth. As
already stated, it is located thirty miles east of San Antonio, and
probably on the shortest river in the world, the Comal, two miles
long. Just to the north of the town, and running west, is a range of
mountains. At the base of this mountain range, the Comal rises from the
bosom of the earth, from several large springs, which flow together
within a distance of a few rods, has no tributary, descends fifty to
seventy-five feet within the two miles, and then falls over a bluff,
making the best water power in the State, and equal to any in the world
for the quantity of water. Then loses itself in a confluence with the
Guadalupe River, which still further north rises in the same sudden
way. And on this stream are several fine water powers. The waters of
the two rivers will equal in volume the Rock River of Illinois. The
San Antonio headwaters are formed from several sudden springs three
miles above the city. The San Marcos, still east of all of those
before named, originates in the same way, and all of them furnish an
abundance of water power all along their courses. And when it comes
to the character of their waters, the writer must confess that he
has never seen their equal in any country. They are as limpid as the
finest spring water ever seen. We have thrown a five cent silver piece
into one of the San Antonio springs, and seen it on the pebbly bottom,
fifteen feet down easily, and the depth did not seem to the eye more
than five or six feet.
The country, where these streams rise, is from six to eight hundred
feet above the level of the sea, and only a hundred and twenty-five
to one hundred and fifty miles from the ocean. The result is a clear,
dry, salubrious atmosphere. So much so that if standing on a mountain
top, twelve miles west of San Antonio, in a clear day, one's vision can
penetrate westward two hundred and fifty miles across the Rio Grande to
the mountains of Monterey, in Mexico.