The meager details of this legend were supplied by Mr. Charles B.
Qualia, Instructor in Spanish at the University of Texas. He says in
explanation: “I heard or read the story when I was a child—where or
under what circumstances, I know not.”
A Franciscan, so the legend goes, was running for his life from some
terrible pursuer. He came to the river, which was so swollen and
turbulent that no human being could hope to swim across it. The waters
were swirling around tree tops on the banks, and in the middle of the
stream great drift trunks were sweeping by. Nevertheless, he plunged in
and was miraculously enabled to reach the other side. After he had
looked at his helpless pursuer standing far away on the opposite bank
and after he had gazed steadily at the waters he had escaped, he
kneeled, and, thanking God, said that his deliverance was by “los
brazos de Dios.” After that time the phrase came to be applied to the
river.
In some way this version may be connected with the “Legend of the
Monk’s Leap” as told by Gustave Aimard, in his The Freebooters, A Story
of the Texan War. [128] In this legend a pursued monk is helped over a
gorge near Galveston by two angels. However, Aimard was one of the most
brazen liars that ever lived, and he probably made up the legend as
facilely as he made up history and geography.
V