The cracked bell of the old church rang out early the morning following the fandango, a cry of distress, in broken accents, and about nine o'clock a straggling procession moved from the western entrance, which proved to be a funeral. The priest, preceded by three boys-one bearing the cross, the others swinging their censorswas in advance of the body, garnished in faded robes, and chanting in a sing-song tone, in company with another, the ritual of the dead. A few uncovered men and noisy boys followed: the affair presenting none of the solemnity to which we are accustomed in the performance of the last duty to departed friends. The coffin was uncovered, and exposed the corpse of an aged female, of a haggard and emaciated appearance. She was clothed in an ordinary calico dress, as unlike a corpse as possible, while a man bearing the top of the coffin, trotted along heedlessly beside it.

While the troops were "marking time" at San Antonio, the town was usually besieged on Sunday by the military from Camp Crockett, who in the course' of their rambles, generally dropped into the Roman church, during a few minutes of the service. The building is without a floor, and was originally without seats; but the vicinity of Protestantism has recently partially supplied the latter deficiency, a few rough benches having been constructed near the altar. The audience, save those belonging to the army, was mostly females. These were squatted on their hams on the ground, and appeared humble and attentive listeners to the harangue of the priest. His address was in Spanish, and delivered in the monotonous, sing-song tones of his profession.

The building is of stone or adobe, and belongs to that class of architecture common to the "missions" in the vicinity, though of more limited capacity. Its walls are of great thickness, but the material is soft, and in many places crumbling away. Over the principal or eastern entrance, there is a small niche, occupied by a very comical statue of his holiness the successor of Saint Peter in general. He has lost the fraction of one arm below the elbow, and a portion of his nose; his robes are rent in many places, and other fractures are visible about his person. There is no sadness, however, amid so much dilapidation; and the figure reminds one of a clown, drawing down the usual thunders of applause from the juveniles, in the very facetious act of placing his thumb on his nose, and extending his fingers, while he pantomimes "you can't come it."

The city of San Antonio de Bexar differs from all other towns in the United States, unless possibly Texas may possess its parallel. The streets are narrow and crooked, and the houses, with the exception of four, are of one story, built of stone or mud, or of a combination of mud and wood. To construct those of the latter class, long poles are driven into the ground, as close as their crookedness will permit, and the intervals are then filled up with clay. The surface of the interior is smothly plastered, and looks passably well, but the exterior has the appearance of a pig-pen rather than the abode of man. The roofs are thatched, and afford but miserable protection from the weather. The stone and adobe (unburned brick) buildings, are generally plastered and whitewashed on the outside, and of course present a more comfortable aspect than the others. The side walls rise higher than the lower line of the roofs-which are almost flat-forming a kind of parapet with openings at regular intervals for the passage of the water. The roofs incline only in one direction; they are formed by heavy rafters laid a few inches apart, upon which boards, running in the same direction, are firmly nailed, the joints being immediately above the rafters. The whole then receives a covering of cement, and perhaps a foot or two of clay. Wooden gutters pass through the holes left in the parapet walls, and project several feet into the street, so that at a short distance the houses present somewhat the appearance of a fortification, bristling with artillery. With few exceptions, they have no floors other than the ground. This, when dry, forms a hard surface; but in many houses they have worn away so much as to bring the level below that of the streets, which are thus drained into the houses. All of the buildings of Mexican origin are without windows, and, while they look very like prisons, are indeed little better.

On the whole, this place, though nearly as old as Philadelphia—it was settled about 1685-presents to the stranger only ideas of abject poverty and wretchedness. Whether it is due to the stagnant character of the people, their imbecile government, or the tyranny of their religion; the fact cannot be denied, that the native Mexicans are in an extremity of degradation, rarely reached even by the semicivilized. Instead of having advanced with the world, they actually appear to be less civilized and enlightened than were the Aztecs when they fell before the power of Cortez. They seem to be subject to some mysterious influence which

hangs like an incubus upon them, paralyzing their physical and stultifying their intellectual energies. They live, nobody knows how, transmitting from one generation to another, mere cumberers of the earth. It may be doubted-whatever may be our hopes-whether the galvanizing power of our own republic will ever be able to infuse into them any thing of life or activity. Like the aborigines, whose blood they so largely share, they appear to be fast dwindling into mere wrecks, monuments of greatness that has passed away for ever.

The Inspector General arrived on the 31st of August, and commenced his duties at once, by mustering and inspecting the troops. His presence created no little excitement among those of the regulars who had recently had nothing to do with razors, and had cut the acquaintance of the barber. Even the few who presented no Esau development, save a graceful tuft pendent from the salient point of the chin, trembled with anxiety, lest that little might be shorn of its fair proportions. All save the volunteers, (lucky fellows, who regulate themselves!) who in any degree swerved from the form and dimensions, so accurately and perspicuously described, as I find it to be, in the Army Regulations, above a line [straight, curved, broken or disjointed, the book says not], drawn from "the lower tip of the car " to "the curve of the mouth," were in great trepidation. They had very reasonable doubts as to the reading, and very unwholesome fears as to the construction. The article is almost as unmeaning as "the resolutions of '98," and must certainly have originated with a Virginian. If the line had to be drawn "to the mouth," it might be understood; but to have it to what any military anatomist may be pleased to consider the :( curve" of that beautiful and essential facial appendage, is rather too general for a strict constructionist. The curve of the mouth," moreover, has never been determined. It is not discussed as any one of the conic sections, nor does it figure among lines of the transcendental order. It is neither algebraic nor logarithmic, and its properties appear to have been investigated only in relation to military whiskers. The scarcely fledged subaltern, in the chrysalis state from adolescence to manhood, sighs as he thinks the silky down upon his upper lip, which he has reared with so many delicate attentions, must be nipped by the early frost of a general order. The offender more daring perhaps, but not more confident, who in adhering to the " regulation whisker," hopes to force through a

contraband moustache, shudders as the crisis arrives which must expose the enormity to the Argus of the Army. While the hardened and reckless, whose grim visages present a growth untouched by the barber's blade, and as undefiled as Samson's when it fell before the shears of Delilah's treacherous confederate, look with philosophic but desperate unconcern upon the alarm of others, and with heroic firmness, hold themselves, as represented by their beards, ready for the guillotine.

The "Mission Concepcion" is one of the numerous structures for quasi religious purposes, created by the Spanish Jesuits for the conversion of the Indians to Romanism. They are all now deserted, and abandoned literally "to the moles and the bats," and there is nothing visible in the condition of Mexican or Indian, to indicate any knowledge or any appreciation of the pure doctrines and divine morality of the New Testament. From an imperfect inscription now almost obliterated, on the building-which is of stone and of stately appearance-it seems to have been erected or completed in the year 1754. But little is left of the interior finish, and that hardly visible, as the building was so darkened by bats and so offensive that entrance was almost impossible. Near this place, on the 28th of October, 1835, occurred a brief, but hotly contested engagement, between a party of about one hundred Texans under Fannin and Bowie, and three hundred Mexicans, in which the latter were defeated with a loss of near one hundred killed and wounded, and a small piece of artillery.

On the right bank of the river, and about six miles below San Antonio, stands the "Mission of San Jose." It is a building of more pretension in its size and style of architecture than the other, and doubtless retains at present much of the imposing appearance designed for effect on the Indians. The front is of elaborate finish, the doorway being surrounded with six figures in alto relievo, and other richly sculptured ornaments. The ground forms the only floor, except at the altar, where an area of twenty-five or thirty feet square is covered with stone. As you enter, an apartment at the right displays through a grated door, a statue of the Virgin, apparelled in an old, faded calico gown; and as well calculated, perhaps, to stifle any sentiments of devotion, and substitute those of derision, as any design that could be erected in a temple to the Almighty. There are small chapels on either side of the principal aisle, but untenanted even by the symbol of a saint in sackcloth,

The roof is formed by three cloistered arches, resting upon massive pillars, and a dome, of perhaps thirty or forty feet in diameter. The altar still preserves its elaborate workmanship, but the rich gilding is seen only in a few spots, which have eluded the corroding touch of time. Back of the main building, extends a long wing, to which arched porticoes are appended, which an old negro, sole occupant, and not unworthy successor of the Jesuits, represents as having been constructed for, and occupied as, a convent. By the aid of steps cut into a log, extending from the ground to a stone stairway, the visitor is enabled to ascend to the tower. He there finds two cracked bells, bearing date, Seville, 1782." A large stone cross, which originally rose over the entrance, has been broken off, and its fragments still remain on the roof. Here, too, may be best seen how the old pile is crumbling into ruins, from the devastations which time and neglect have already wrought. There is a broad fissure in one of the arches, which must be constantly widening, and unless speedily arrested, will not long hence bring the old edifice to the ground. Peach-trees are springing from the roof, and round the highest point of the turret, the nopal, or prickly pear, is winding its branches, and yielding a most abundant growth of fruit.

In any other part of the United States, a building, so venerable and classical in appearance, rising as it were from the midst of a vast solitude, yet in the vicinity of hundreds starving for the bread of life, would become an object of wide-spread interest, and might perhaps induce some liberal man of wealth to interpose the "almighty dollar," to arrest, if possible, its downward progress, and convert it not only in name but in reality to the uses of a pure Christianity. But here it is only a haunt for the half-starved, semi-civilized, mongrel and dissolute descendants of the Spaniards and Aztecs, whose stagnant energies would permit the golden fruit of Hesperides, to remain unplucked for ever.

We were soon initiated into another phase of military life, that of a court martial, which was ordered from the Arkansas cavalry, on two Illinois officers. Colonel Yell was president, and Lieut. Kingsbury of the army, judge advocate of the court. The most striking member of the body was Captain Albert Pike, a man of original genius and varied powers, already distinguished as a poet and a lawyer, and only waiting for the opportunity, to weave with his civic wreath, the laurels

of the soldier.

He is tall, broad chested,

and well developed, with a most exuberant growth of dark hair about his face, and in his military costume, certainly looks more like a corsair than a poet. The power of genius, however, is unmistakably enthroned upon his brow, and its fire flashes from his eye.

The Alamo is by far the most interesting object in the vicinity of San Antonio, though rapidly losing the romance connected with its historical recollections. It is now a shapeless mass of ruins. The walls on the north-castern side are level with the ground, and there are broad openings on the other fronts, which preserve only detached portions of their original dimensions. The entrance to the chapel, the remains of which are at the northern angle of the work, still shows the elaborately cut stone which formed the façade, and indicates no ordinary degree of taste and skill. The doorway is arched, supported by two lofty columns. The Mexicans have a tradition that the cement of the walls was mixed with goats' milk, by which some peculiar sanctity, if not strength, was given to the structure; but how much or how little of the tale is true, cannot now be determined. Extending from the western side of the chapel is a wing, similar to that at the old mission, used as a convent, according to some, and by others, supposed to have been a barrack for soldiers. Gibbon observes in substance, that the barbarian now stables his steed in the palaces of the Cesars; and within this consecrated inclosure, the hammer of the quarter-master now rings upon the anvil, and the sacred retreats of the Mexican vestals (?) are decorated by the rude presence of the grim followers of Vulcan. Sic transit. &c.

Of the ditch which, it is affirmed, originally surrounded the work, all signs have so completely disappeared, that one may be pardoned for doubting whether it ever had an existence. There is a rank growth of weeds within the outline of the walls, and a few Mexican hovels on one side, which seem to have been erected from its fallen materials. Every thing around it is stamped with gloom and desolation. The solemn chant, the lofty swell of the organ, the prayer which daily rose to heaven, have vanished for ever from the church; the glitter of the soldier, or the veiled faces of the nuns, will be seen no more; and the fire of musketry and the roar of artillery, are hushed, until a mightier power than man shall cause these dry bones again to revive, and re

people the habitations which are now desolate. Time and the elements will soon complete what the Mexican army commenced, and this spot, which is worthy to be reverenced as a second Thermopyla, will present but a shattered and crumbling monument to the immortal memory of its defenders.

On the 23d day of February, 1836,* General Santa Anna entered San Antonio de Bexar, and took possession of the town without firing a gun. The small garrison of one hundred and thirty men, under the command of William Barret Travis, retired as he advanced to the Alamo, on the opposite side of the river, determined there to offer such resistance to the progress of the tyrant, as their energies and resources should permit by a direct appeal to the God of battles. Flushed with the conquest, so easily effected, of the town, the Mexican Commander prepared for an immediate attack upon the Alamo. He ordered breastworks to be thrown up on every commanding point, and artillery to be planted, wherever it could be made most effective. One battery was completed on the right bank of the river, by the 25th, and without waiting for others, the siege was at once commenced.

It is a dark and gloomy morning, devoted to a dark and unholy purpose. Exulting in the work of death upon which he is entering, Santa Anna crosses the river in person, and establishes his headquarters in a small stone building-yet standing-from which he may the more accurately perceive the progress of his designs, without exposing himself to his enemies. The signal is given, and ere the sun has risen upon those hostile hosts, the roar of the Mexican battery awakens the echoes far and wide, and rouses from their slumbers the yet unconscious inhabitants. But the defenders of the Alamo have not, for a single moment, lost sight of the movements of their wily and implacable foes-they watch the studied direction of every gun; they see the match lighted, they listen breathless, as if even at that distance, they could hear the command to fire; and when the walls of the citadel tremble under the shock of the iron hail, and the fragments of the parapet are whirled aloft by the sudden impulse; they send back a shout of defiance, mingled with a discharge from their own guns, as distinctive, if not as deafening, as the thunder of their assailants. Before the smoke rolls away, and the reverberations are lost in the distance;

while the shouts of the besieged still linger in the ears of the besiegers, the cannonade is renewed, and for seven hours, without pause or relaxation, fiercely continued upon the walls of the Alamo. But these walls yield no more than the spirits of their defenders. The fire is steadily returned; and though stones are shivered around them, there are stout hearts and willing hands ready to repair every breach, and to restore from the interior whatever may have been destroyed from without. Earth is thrown up; every crack or fissure is closed as fast as created, by the eager efforts of those who will permit no evidence of success to cheer the hopes of their enemies. The sun has almost sunk behind the western plains, when there is a pause in the work of demolition. The firing of the besiegers ceases for the day, with the Mexican thirst for blood unsatiated: not a single drop has been shed within the Alamo. Many of Santa Anna's own men have bit the dust, before the artillerists and riflemen of the fort; but thus far they are unavenged. Darkness falls upon besieger and besieged. The former raise new intrenchments to prosecute the assault; the latter establish a close watch for the night, and endeavor to seek that repose which shall renew their vigor for the contest which they know will come to-mor

row.

The morning of the 26th dawns, and reveals to the occupants of the fort, the effect of the midnight labors of their enemies, in the establishment of two additional batteries within the Alameda of the Alamo. The bayonets of the infantry which have crossed the river during the night, glitter in the morning beams, and the plumes of the cavalry are seen waving on the eastern hills, to intercept the expected aid from that quarter. The contest is renewed by a slight skirmish between a small party of Texans, sent in quest of wood and water, and a Mexican detachment under General Sesma: but this is a mere overture to the grand performance of the day. The thunders of the heavy ordnance, under the direction of Colonel Ampudia, are soon roused into action; volley after volley is poured into the fort, and answered only, except at rare intervals, by the shouts of those within. There is no pause-no cessation. Still the cannonade goes on; shells fly hissing through the air, and balls bury themselves within the ramparts; but night again comes on, and the Mexican General

in vain looks for evidence of success. Baffled, but not discouraged, he advance's his line of intrenchments, and prepares, with the morning light, to resume his bloody task. The north wind sweeps Over the prairies, as it only sweeps in Texas, a stormy lullaby to the stormy passions of those contending hosts. The darkness is broken only by the feeble blaze of a few huts,-fired by the Texans,—which had furnished a cover to the enemy. The flames curl upwards with a sickly glare, and their fitful flashes throw a lurid light for a moment upon the slumbering army, and expire. The reign of darkness and of silence is restored.

The next day the Mexicans appear inactive, though engaged in the construction of additional batteries. There is but little firing on either side. Travis and his men, with spirits unsubdued, and with energies weakened, but not exhausted, are applying their contracted resources to the purposes of defence. No heart falters; no pulse throbs with diminished power; no hand shrinks from the labor that necessity imposes. All is confidence and determination; and in every breast there is firm reliance springing from the holiness of the cause and the certainty of its final triumph.

Sunday follows; but brings no rest to those whom God has created in His own image, and who in violation of His commands, are thus yielding to their erring and unhallowed passions. Perhaps within the chapel of the Alamo, consecrated to the worship of the Almighty, and distinguished by the emblem of suffering and of salvation, which surmounts the dome, heads may be bowed in prayer to the God of battles for deliverance from their sanguinary foc: but that foe takes no heed of Sabbaths. Exclusive followers, as they proclaim themselves, of the true church, they doom to destruction the very temple they have erected for its worship; and kissing the cross suspended from their necks, and planted before every camp, they point their guns upon the very symbol for which they profess such unbounded reverence. The fire of the Mexican artillery keeps company with the minutes as they roll on. Morning, midday, and evening are passed, yet there is no faltering among those who are defending the Thermopyle of Texas liberty. Another sun rises and sets, and yet another; still the indomitable hearts of Travis and his companions quail not before the untiring efforts of their enemy. In spite of that enemy's vindictive vigilance, the little garrison receives from

Gonzales a reinforcement of thirty-three men; additional victims for the funeral pyre, soon to be kindled by Santa Anna, on the surrounding hills, as a human hecatomb to Mexican vengeance.

New batteries are erected by the besiegers; from every point around, the missiles of destruction concentrate upon the Alamo. The circles grow smaller and smaller. The final hour must soon come. Provisions are not yet exhausted, but the ammunition cannot last many days longer. Water has long been supplied solely by the daring efforts of a Mexican woman, who, through showers of grape and musketry, has threaded the way to and fro between the river and the citadel, while her own blood has marked the path. She bears within her the stern and lofty spirit of her illustrious ancestor, stretched upon the racks of Cortez, and it is not the fear of torture or of death, that can swerve her from her purpose.

The siege has continued for ten days. The Mexican General has received large reinforcements, and his army now numbers thousands. He has been unceasing in his efforts to batter down the walls, but has thus far failed. The triumph is with Travis; but it is written in the heart of his ruthless foe that he must die, and when the cannonade is suspended on the 6th of March, a small breach has been effected, and Santa Anna has determined, without a summons to surrender, that the hour for the assault has arrived. During ten days a blood-red flag has been streaming from the spire of the church in San Antonio, proclaiming that no quarter is to be given to the champions of the Alamo-that blood alone will appease the fury of Mexican malice. When the sun again goes down, the flag is no longer seen, for the deed of which it was the sign has been accomplished.

It is midnight. Stars are smiling in the firmament, and the repose of paradise seems hovering over the armed hosts, and hills, and plains which encircle the Alamo. The calm is so deep and solemn, that the angel of death seems to pause before the strife and carnage which are to follow. A low murmur rises upon the air, which gradually becomes more and more distinct. Lights are glancing mysteriously in the distance, and indicate some unusual movement. The besieging army is in motion. There is no advance by columns: the force of the Mexicans is so great that the fort may be completely surrounded, leaving intervals only for the fire of artillery. The place is girdled by a deep line of in