Westward from the Mississippi River the "Sunset Route" to the Pacific
leads across the sugar plantations of Louisiana. This Southern Pacific
railway passes many bayous having luxuriant growth of bordering live
oaks, magnolias and cypress, hung with festoons of Spanish moss,
crosses the Atchafalaya River at Morgan City, and beyond, skirts along
the picturesque and winding Bayou Teche in a region originally peopled
by colonies of French Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia. Ultimately
the route crosses Calcasieu River at Lake Charles, and thirty-eight
miles beyond, goes over the Sabine River into the "Lone Star State" of
Texas, the largest in the Union. The name of Texas comes from a tribe
of Indians found there when La Salle made the first European
settlement on the coast at Fort St. Louis on Lavaca River in 1685, but
after the Spanish occupation in the eighteenth century the country was
long known as the New Philippines, that being the official
designation in their records. At the mouth of Sabine River is Sabine
Lake, where Port Arthur has been established as a prosperous railway
terminal, having access to the Gulf by a ship canal with terminating
jetties, deepening the channel outlet to the sea. Farther along the
coast is Galveston, the chief Texan seaport, built on the northeastern
extremity of Galveston Island, which spreads for thirty miles in front
of the spacious Galveston Bay, covering nearly five hundred miles
surface. The entrance from the sea is obstructed by a bar through
which the Government excavated at great expense a channel, flanked by
stone jetties five miles long. It is a low-lying city with wide,
straight streets, embowered in luxuriant tropical vegetation, while
the equable winter temperature makes it a charming health-resort. A
magnificent sea-beach spreads along the Gulf front of the island for
many miles. Galveston, in September, 1900, was swept by a most
terrific cyclone and tidal wave, destroying thousands of lives and a
vast number of buildings.
Texas was a Province of Mexico, under Spanish and afterwards Mexican
rule, and its many attractions in the early nineteenth century brought
a large accession of colonists to the eastern portions from the
adjacent parts of the United States. The Americans became so numerous
that in 1830 the Mexican Congress prohibited further immigration, and
the result was a revolt in 1835, the organization of a Provisional
Government, a war which ended in the defeat of the Mexicans in the
battle of San Jacinto in 1836, and the final independence of Texas.
The people then sought annexation to the United States, but the State
was not admitted until 1845, the Mexican War following. Two men of
that time were prominent in Texas, Stephen F. Austin, who brought the
first large colony from the United States settling on the Colorado and
Brazos Rivers, and Sam Houston, who, after being Governor of
Tennessee, migrated to Texas, led the revolt, commanded their army,
and was made the first President of the independent State. The latter
has his name preserved in the active city of Houston on Buffalo Bayou,
a tributary of Galveston Bay, and about fifty miles northwest of
Galveston. Houston is a busy railway centre, handling large amounts of
cotton, sugar and timber, and is rapidly expanding, having sixty
thousand people.
The Trinity River is the chief affluent of Galveston Bay, flowing down
from Northern Texas, and having upon its banks another busy railway
centre, Dallas, with fifty thousand people and an extensive trade.
About thirty miles above, on Trinity River, is the old Indian frontier
post of Fort Worth, now a town of forty thousand population and the
headquarters of the cattle-raisers of Northern Texas. For many miles
in all directions are the extensive cattle ranges, and to the north
and west spreads the "Great Staked Plain," a vast plateau elevated
nearly five thousand feet above the sea, covering some fifty thousand
square miles, and being surrounded by a bordering escarpment of
erosion to the lower levels, much resembling palisades. The stakes
driven by the early Spaniards to mark their way are said to have given
this plain its name, and it has now become an almost limitless cattle
pasturage. When Austin's American colony settled on the Colorado River
west of Houston, his name was given the town which was ultimately
selected as the State Capital, where there are now twenty thousand
people who look out upon the magnificent view of the Colorado
Mountains. Here is the Texas State University with seven hundred and
fifty students, and one of the finest State Capitols in the country, a
splendid red granite structure, which was built by a syndicate in
exchange for a grant of three million acres of land, the building
occupying seven years in construction and costing $3,500,000. Two
miles above the city an enormous dam seventy feet high encloses the
waters of Colorado River for the water supply and manufacturing power,
and thus makes Lake McDonald, twenty-five miles long. A heavy storm
and flood in the spring of 1900 broke this dam and let out the lake,
causing great loss of life and damage in the city.
Eighty miles southwest of Austin is the ancient city of San Antonio,
known as the "cradle of Texas liberty," a Spanish town upon the San
Antonio and San Pedro Rivers, small streams dividing it into
irregular parts, the former receiving the latter and flowing into the
Gulf at Espiritu Santo Bay. There are sixty thousand people in San
Antonio, of many races, chiefly Americans, Mexicans and Germans, and
it is a leading wool, cattle, horse, mule and cotton market. The
Spaniards penetrated into this region in the latter part of the
seventeenth century and established one of their usual joint
religious-military posts among the Indians upon the plan of
colonization then in vogue. The Presidio or military station was
called San Antonio de Bexar, while during the early eighteenth century
there were founded various religious Missions, the chief being by
Franciscan monks, the Mission of San Antonio de Valero. There are four
other Missions in and near the city, dating from that early period,
their ancient buildings partly restored, but some of them also
considerably in ruins. To the eastward of San Antonio River was built
in a grove of the alamo or cottonwood trees in 1744 a low, strong,
thick-walled church of adobé for the Franciscans, called from its
surroundings the Alamo. When the Texans revolted, they held San
Antonio as an outpost with a garrison of one hundred and forty-five
men, commanded by Colonel James Bowie, the famous duellist and
inventor of the "bowie knife," who was originally from Louisiana.
Bowie fell ill of typhoid fever, and Colonel Travis took command.
Among the garrison was the eccentric David Crockett of Tennessee, who
had been a member of Congress, and joined them as a volunteer. General
Santa Anna marched with a large Mexican army against them, arriving
February 22, 1836, and the little garrison retired within the church
of the Alamo, which they defended against four thousand Mexicans in a
twelve days' siege. The final assault was made at daylight, March 6th,
a lodgment was effected, and until nine o'clock a battle was fought
from room to room within the church, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict
at short range, and not ceasing until every Texan was killed; but this
was not until two thousand three hundred Mexicans had fallen. Upon the
memorial of this terrible contest, at the Texas State Capital, is the
inscription: "Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo
had none." This butchery caused a thrill of horror throughout the
United States. "Remember the Alamo" became the watchword of the
Texans, much aid was sent them, and the succor, coming from the desire
to avenge the massacre, contributed largely to their ability to defeat
the Mexicans in the subsequent decisive battle on San Jacinto River,
down near Galveston Bay, which was fought in April. The old Church of
the Alamo, since restored, is preserved as a national monument on the
spacious Alamo plaza. The name of Houston, the Texan leader, is given
to Fort Sam Houston, the United States military post on a hill north
of San Antonio. The old Alamo is the shrine of Texas; and as visitors
stroll around the place they are weirdly told how the spirits of the
departed heroes, Crockett, Bowie, Travis and others, when the storms
rage at night about the ancient building, wander through the sacristy
with the heavy measured tread of armed troopers. It was in the midst
of a storm that the Mexicans broke through a barred window and thus
gained entrance in the siege. On the southern border of San Antonio
are the extensive Fair Grounds, where Roosevelt's Rough Riders,
largely recruited from the neighboring Texan ranches, were organized
for the Spanish War in 1898. The most extensive Texas cattle ranches
are south and west of San Antonio, the largest of them, King's Ranch,
near the Gulf to the southward, covering seven hundred thousand acres,
and being stocked with three thousand brood mares and a hundred
thousand cattle.