SAN ANTONIO, THE CAIRO OF AMERICA
If you want to plunge into America's Egypt, there are as many ways to go
as you have moods. You explain that the ocean voyage is half the
attraction to European travel. There may be a difference of opinion on
that, as I know people who would like to believe that the Atlantic could
be bridged; but if you are keen on an ocean voyage, you can reach the
Egypt of America by boat to Florida, then west by rail; or by boat
straight to any of the Texas harbors. By way of Florida, you can take
your fill of the historic and antique and the picturesque in St.
Augustine and Pensacola and New Orleans; and if there are any yarns of
rarer flavor in all the resorts of Europe than in the old quarters of
these three places, I have never heard of them. You can drink of the
spring of the elixir of life in St. Augustine, and lose yourself in the
trenches of old Fort Barrancas at Pensacola, and wander at will in the
old French town of New Orleans. Each place was once a pawn in the
gambles of European statesmen. Each has heard the clang of armed
knights, the sword in one hand, the cross in the other. Each has seen
the pirate fleet with death's head on the flag at the masthead come
tacking up the bays, sometimes to be shattered and sunk by cannon shot
from the fort bastions. Sometimes the fort itself was scuttled by the
buccaneers; once, at least, at Fort Barrancas, it suffered loot at
terrible, riotous, drunken hands, when a Spanish officer's daughter who
was captured for ransom succeeded in plunging into the sea within sight
of her watching father.
But whether you enter the Egypt of America by rail overland, or by sea,
San Antonio is the gateway city from the south to the land of play and
mystery. It is to the Middle West what Quebec is to Canada, what Cairo
is to Egypt--the gateway, the meeting place of old and new, of Latin and
Saxon, of East and West, of North and South. Atmosphere? Physically, the
atmosphere is champagne: spiritually, you have not gone ten paces from
the station before you feel a flavor as of old wine. There are the open
Spanish plazas riotous with bloom flanked by Spanish-Moorish ruins flush
on the pavement, with skyscraper hotels that are the last word in
modernity. Live oaks heavy with Spanish moss hang over sleepy streams
that come from everywhere and meander nowhere. You see a squad of
soldiers from Fort Sam Houston wheeling in measured tread around a
square (only there isn't anything absolutely square in all San Antonio)
and they have hardly gone striding out of sight before you see a Mexican
burro trotting to market with a load of hay tied on its back. A motor
comes bumping over the roads--such roads as only the antique can
boast--and if it is fiesta time, or cowboy celebration, you are apt to
see cowboys cutting such figure eights in the air as a motor cannot
execute on antique pavement.
You enter a hotel and imagine you are in the Plaza, New York, or the
Ritz, London; but stay! The frieze above the marble walls isn't gilt;
and it isn't tapestry. The frieze is a long panel in bronze
_alto-relievo_. I think it is a testimonial to San Antonio's sense of
the fitness of things that that frieze is not of Roman gladiators, or
French gardens with beringed ladies and tame fawns. It is a frieze of
the cowboys taking a stampeding herd up the long trail--drifting and
driving but held together by a rough fellow in top boots and sombrero;
and the rotunda has a frieze of cowboys because that three
million-dollar hotel was built out of "cow" money. Old and new, past and
present, Saxon and Latin, North and South, East and West--that is San
Antonio. You can never forget it for a minute. It is such a shifting
panorama as you could only get from traveling thousands of miles
elsewhere, or comparing a hundred Remington drawings. San Antonio is a
curious combination of Remington and Alma Tadema in real life; and I
don't know anywhere else in the world you can get it. There are three
such huge hotels in San Antonio besides a score of lesser ones, to take
care of the 30,000 tourists who come from the Middle West to winter in
San Antonio; but remember that while 30,000 seems a large number of
tourists for one place, that is only one-tenth the number of Americans
who yearly see Europe.
And never for a moment can you forget that as Cairo is the gateway to
Eastern travel, so San Antonio is on the road to Old Mexico and all the
former Spanish possessions of the South. It was here that Madero's band
of revolutionists lived and laid the plans that overthrew Diaz. Long
ago, before the days of railway, it was here that the long caravans of
mule trains used to come with, silver and gold from the mines of Old
Mexico. It was here the highwaymen and roughs and toughs and scum of the
earth used to lie in wait for the passing bullion; and it was here the
Texas Rangers came with short, quick, sharp shrift for rustlers and
robbers. There is one corner in San Antonio where you can see a Mission
dating back to the early seventeen hundreds, and not a stone's throw
away, one of the most famous gambling joints of the wildest days of the
wild Southwest--the site of the old Silver King, where cowboys and
miners from the South used to come in "to clean out" their earnings of a
year, sometimes to ride horses over faro tables, or pot-shot rows of
champagne. A man had "to smile" when he called his "pardner" pet names
in the Silver King; or there would be crackle of more than champagne
corks. Men would duck for hiding. A body would be dragged out, sand
spread on the floor, and the games went on morning, noon and night. The
Missions are crumbling ruins. So is the Silver King. Frontiersmen will
tell you regretfully of the good old days forever gone, when the night
passed but dully if the cowboys did not shoot up all the saloons and
"hurdle" the gaming tables.
* * * * *
Yesterday, it was cowboy and mines in San Antonio. To-day, it is polo
and tourist; and the transition is a natural growth. One would hate to
think of the risks of the Long Trail, for miners from Old Mexico to Fort
Leavenworth, for cowboys from Fort Worth to Wyoming and St. Louis, and
not see the risks rewarded in fortunes to these trail makers. The cowboy
and miner of the olden days--the cowboy and miner who survived, that
is--are the capitalists taking their pleasure in San Antonio to-day. It
was natural that the cow pony bred to keeping its feet in mid-air, or on
earth, should develop into the finest type of polo pony ever known. For
years, the polo clubs of the North, Lenox, Long Island, Milbrook, have
made a regular business of scouring Texas for polo ponies. Horses giving
promise of good points would be picked up at $80, $100, $150. They would
then be rounded on a ranch and trained. San Antonio is situated almost
700 feet up on a high, clear plateau rimmed by blue ridges in the
distance. Recently, a polo ground of 3,200 acres has been laid out; and
the polo clubs of the North are to be invited to San Antonio for the
winter fiestas. As Fort Sam Houston boasts one of the best polo clubs of
the South, competition is likely to attract the sportsmen from far and
near.
You know how it is in all these new Western cities. They are feverish
with a mania of progress. They have grown so fast they cannot keep track
of their own hobble-de-hoy, sprawling limbs. They are drunk with
prosperity. In real estate alone, fortunes have come, as it were,
overnight. All this San Antonio has not escaped. They will tell you with
pardonable pride how this little cow town, where land wasn't worth two
cents an acre outside the Mission walls, has jumped to be a metropolitan
city of over 100,000; how it is the center of the great truck and
irrigation farm district. Fort Sam Houston always has 700 or 800
soldiers in garrison, and sometimes has as many as 4,000; and when army
maneuvers take place, there is an immense reservation outside the city
where as many as 20,000 men can practice mimic war. The day of two cents
or even $20 an acre land round San Antonio is forever past. Land under
the ditch is too valuable for the rating of twenty acres to one steer.
All this and more you will see of modern San Antonio; but still if at
sundown you set out on a vagrant and solitary tour of the old Missions,
I think you will feel as I felt that it was the dauntless spirit of the
old regime that fired the blood of the moderns for the new day that is
dawning. I don't know why it is, but anything in life that is worth
having seems to demand service and sacrifice and, oftener than not, the
martyrdom of heroic and terrible defeat. Then, when you think that the
flag of the cause is trampled in a mire of bloodshed, phoenix-like
the cause rises on eagles' wings to new height, new daring, new victory.
It was so in Texas.
When you visit the Missions of San Antonio, go alone; or go with a
kindred spirit. Don't talk! Let the mysticism and wonder of it sink in
your soul! Soak yourself in the traditions of the Past. Let the dead
hand of the Past reach out and touch you. You will live over again the
heroism of the Alamo, the heroism that preceded the Alamo--that of the
Franciscans who tramped 300 leagues across the desert of Old Mexico to
establish these Missions; the heroism that preceded the
Franciscans--that of La Salle traveling thrice 300 leagues to establish
the cross on the Gulf of Mexico, and perishing by assassin's hand as he
turned on the backward march. You will see the iron cross to his memory
at Levaca. It was because La Salle, the Frenchman, found his way to the
Gulf, that Spain stirred up the viceroys of New Mexico to send sword and
cross over the desert to establish forts in the country of the Tejas
(Texans).
Do you realize what that means? When I cross the arid hills of the Rio
Grande, I travel in a car cooled by electric fans, with two or three
iced drinks between meals. These men marched--most of them on foot, the
cowled priests in sandals, the knights in armor plate from head to
heel--over cactus sands. Do you wonder that they died on the way? Do you
wonder that the marchers coming into the well-watered plains of the San
Antonio with festooned live oaks overhanging the green waters, paused
here and built their string of Missions of which the chief was the one
now known as "The Alamo"--the Mission of the cottonwood trees?
[Illustration: An excellent example of the entrance to an adobe house of
the Southwest, embodying the best traditions of this kind of
architecture]
Six different flags have flown over the land of the Tejas: the French,
the Spanish, the Mexican, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate, the
Union. In such a struggle for ascendancy, needless to tell, much blood
was shed righteously and unrighteously; but of the battle fought at the
Alamo, no justification need be given. It is part of American history,
but it is the kind of history that in other nations goes to make battle
hymns. Details are in every school book. Santa Ana, the newly risen
Mexican dictator, had ordered the 30,000 Americans who lived in Texas,
to disarm. Sam Houston, Crockett, Bowie, Travis, had sprung to arms with
a call that rings down to history yet:
"Fellow citizens and compatriots," wrote Travis from the
doomed Alamo Mission, to Houston and the other leaders
outside, "I am besieged by a thousand or more Mexicans under
Santa Ana. I have sustained a continued bombardment for
twenty-four hours and have not lost a man.... The garrison
is to be put to the sword if the place is taken. I have
answered the summons with a cannon shot and our flag still
waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender, nor
retreat. I call on you in the name of liberty, and of
everything dear to the American character, to come to our
aid with all despatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements
daily, and will no doubt increase to 3,000 or 4,000 in four
or five days. Though this call may be neglected, I am
determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die
like a soldier who forgets not what is due to his own honor
and that of his country--Victory or Death!
W. Barrett Travis
Lieut.-Col. Commanding."
In the fort with Travis were 180 men under Bowie and Crockett. The siege
began on Feb. 23, 1836, and ended on March 6th. Besides the frontiersmen
in the fort were two women, two children and two slaves. The Mission was
arranged in a great quadrangle fifty-four by 154 yards with _acequias_
or irrigation ditches both to front and rear. The garrison had succeeded
in getting inside the walls about thirty bushels of corn and eighty beef
cattle; so there was no danger of famine. The big courtyard was in the
rear. The convent projected out in front of the courtyard. To the left
angle of the convent was the chapel or Mission of the Alamo. Santa Ana
had come across the desert with 5,000 men. To the demand for surrender,
Travis answered with a cannon shot. The Mexican leader then hung the red
flag above his camp and ordered the band to play "no quarter." For eight
days, shells came hurtling inside the walls incessantly, dawn to dark,
dark to dawn. Just at sunset on March 3rd, there was a bell. Travis
collected his men and gave them their choice of surrendering and being
shot, or cutting their way out through the besieging line. The
besiegers at this time consisted of 2,500 infantrymen bunched close to
the walls of the Alamo--too close to be shot from above, and 2,500
cavalry and infantry back on the Plaza and encircling the Mission to cut
off all avenue of escape.
Travis drew a line on the ground with his sword.
"Every man who will die with me, come across that line! Who will be
first? March!"
Every man leaped over the line but Bowie, who was ill on a cot bed.
"Boys, move my cot over the line," he said.
At four o'clock next morning, the siege was resumed. The bugle blew a
single blast. With picks, crowbars and ladders, the Mexicans closed in.
The besieged waited breathlessly. The Mexicans placed the ladders and
began scaling. The sharpshooters inside the walls waited till the heads
appeared above the walls--then fired. As the top man fell back, the one
beneath on the ladder stepped in the dead man's place. Then the
Americans clubbed their guns and fought hand to hand. By that, the
Mexicans knew that ammunition was exhausted and the defenders few. The
walls were scaled and battered down first in a far corner of the convent
yard. Behind the chapel door, piles of sand had been stacked. From the
yard, the Texans were driven to the convent, from the convent to the
chapel. Travis fell shot at the breach in the yard wall. Bowie was
bayoneted on the cot where he lay. Crockett was clubbed to death just
outside the chapel door to the left. By nine o'clock, no answering shot
came from the Alamo. The doors were rammed and rushed. Not a Texan
survived. Two women, two children and a couple of slaves were pulled out
of hiding from chancel and stalls. These were sent across to the main
camp. The bodies of the 182 heroes were piled in a pyramid with fagots;
and fired. So ended the Battle of the Alamo, one of the most terrible
defeats and heroic defenses in American history. It is unnecessary to
relate that Sam Houston exacted from the Mexicans on the battlefield of
San Jacinto a terrible punishment for this defeat. Captured and killed,
his toll of defeated Mexicans down at Houston came to almost 1,700.
Such is the story of one of San Antonio's Missions. One other has a tale
equally tragic; but all but two are falling to utter ruin. I don't know
whether it would be greater desecration to lay hand on them and save
them, or let them fall to dust. It was nightfall when I went to the
three on the outskirts of the city. Two have little left but the walls
and the towers. A third is still used as place of worship by a little
settlement of Mexicans. The slant light of sunset came through the
darkened, vacant windows, the tiers of weathered stalls, the empty,
twin-towered belfries. You could see where the well stood, the bake
house, the school. Shrubbery planted by the monks has grown wild in the
courtyards; but you can still call up the picture of the cowled priests
chanting prayers. The Missions are ruins; but the hope that animated
them, the fire, the heroism, the dauntless faith, still burn in Texas
blood as the sunset flame shines through the dismantled windows.