Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-06-19
From the Kansas Magazine.
BGdd M'AlIister,s Partner.

be diverse, according to the times or the
Location or the conspiracy of events; but
the characteristics of the product are al
ways the same. For instance, there
were Julesburg and Cheyenne and Cor
inne, and Newtown and Abilene and
Gibson; hard towns because the western
railroad as civilizing agent first acts as
cendit through which are slouched out
the barbarities of Christian enlighten-
ment. You might say that those who
come along with the Rible and the yard
stick and the scalpel and the spelling
book, in the years by-and-by, treading as
they do upon graves whose occupants
sleep as they fell with their boots on,
live under plan of social salvation
whose crucifixions have come in the shape
OF deadly rencontres, and whose sacri-
fees, spilling hot blood out of maddened
bosoms, died unwittingly for the com
mon veal In accordance with some in
sGutable purpose that is manifest only
inits results. But Brownsville was not
a railroad town. 1t had none of the
features of that ilk. The only highway
OF commerce that touched its precincts
was the sluggish Rio Grande, a river
whose water ever had on its surface
dry, hot, parched look, and toiled along
painfully to the sea, as though it hesita-
ted between going back up stream to be
rolled by the boots of the Kiowa cayuses
and going on down into the the Gulf to
be narrowed by the keels of revenue-Cut-
ters and Tamico contrabandista schoon-
e's. 1t was not built of canvass and
pine boards either, with that bare COM
fart lose avd 1ooIr thorn o VIC
is about the railroad towns. In this re-
spect it bore no resemblance to the hard
towns of the Upper Platte or the Ark
ansas or the Smoky Hill, the Union Pa
eitic or the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe. 1t was an old town. But it coul0
not be called .dIlapidated, becaure that
word implies an interior newness which
no one would suspect Brownsville of
having ever possessed. There is nothing
to avert the impression that this town
was built old in the first place. One i'm
aginined, as he picked his way along the
streets, that the great refuse
mud-holes. had been carefully digged and
arranged there; that the bricks in the
sidewalk had been broken or set up on
end purpOsely and with an aesthetic view
to the production of an antique effect :;
that the glass and sash-bars had been
studiously broken in the windows, and
the moss tastefully arranged upon the
corniCs by some cOnSunmate geniuSln en-
gineering and architecture whose touch
was counterfeit of Times. Brownsville
had a history; not SO much its own as
it was reflection from Palo Alto and
Resaca, Point Isabel and Buena Vista,
and may be it had borrowed something
from that mstre whereof San JacllintO
and Goliad had enough and to spare.
In 1865 it had become again the focus of
attention. The nation, drawing long
breath after AppowattOx and Benton
Vile and Shreveport, had cast an eye
wherein was no beaming of kindliness
toward the bediZened platoons of the
French Foreign Legion that carried the
eagles of Maximilians s exotic empire, and
seemed to menace there integrated re-
public with shadow of disaster.
II was not easy to imagine what dam
ger there was TO be apprchended by the
dwellers in Maine and Oregon from the
half a dozen escddrOnS of uniformed eX-
conyiCts who represented the dladem OF
the Austrian and the coronet of his Car
lotta in Matambras in 1865. But the
government at Washington saw in these
fez-capped brutes who spent their days
in dcsuftory drilling or in lazy loafing
about the plaza and under the palms, and
their nights in the soft delirium Of the
fandango and loye-making in bad Span
ish to black-eyed MestiZas, menace to
the integrity OF Republic against which
Lees iron-sided veterans had shattered
themselves to pieces in vain. SO, when
the sunlight of that peaceful sprtng-time
had sprouted daisies again on the sod of
Antietam, and called out the modest
clover from its red-soaked bed in the
Gettysburg hill-sides, what still remained
of war had drifted off to Brownsville.
And when its condition during the sum
mer Of '65 is described as the fag-end OF
a fratricidal war, r,-the stage lumber
room after four-act tragedy that had d
continent for its scenery,-a generalidea
is conveyed:
What its population was at that date
would not be easy to say specifically.
It's component elements would equally
defy accurate enumeration. II there
was a cut-throat or horse thief or al
Indian fighter or. a smuggler or bandit
or a gambler or sporting woman, black
white, red, brown, or tawny, in the
whole Southwest who did not visit
Brownsville during that, summer, it was
because he or she was locked up some
where else and could not get away. /
was the Universal Ulcer; the Cancer O
Creation. Its noisesome streets were
thronged with the motliest and indescrib
ablest crowd that was ever collected OF
the face of the earth-cattle rancher
and freighters from . the country anC
from Camargo; Mexican guerillas from
Chihuahua and French deserters from
Monterey cotton spectators and con
trabandistas; negro soldiers of the United
States Army and horse thieves from boil
sides of the river miners FROM SOnor;
and scouts and Indian fighters from
Eagle Pass and Los Pecos; gamblers
outlaws, greasers, prostitutes-these Wer
the subdivisions of the census of Browns
vile in 1865. There was something il
the atmosphere of the place and its sur
| roundings, something about its Location
and the ease wherewith the law-if ther
had been any-could be eluded, tha
it bred devilment and desperateness as
morass breeds miasma or a garbage heaI
fever. So under the summer sun of th
tropics, and famed by the hot breath o
the Gulfe breez, Brownsville lay lazil
and festered upon the face of the earth
X
On the second corner. as you came u
! from the old ferry landing, and nearl.
opposite the little old custom-house-
which the smugglers might have used TO
a depository of contraband goods if the,
needed storage room-was an old, rec
dish brown brick house, two storie
high, with gaunt dormer windows an
long moss grown under the caves a
odor of departed gentility about the hig
front steps and a shadow of ancien
hospitality upon the brass bell-knob.
/ had been consular residence OF cor
sequence in that dim period "before th
war" In 1866 it was a favorite lair G
that tiger that purrs upon the baize s
softly, sucks the blood of his victims OF
! of their finger.ends, and then, when n
other victims are left, turns to and rend
his keepers. 1t was faro-bank.
| woman owned it; woman with hi
i tory that had In it even more of romano
than blazed out of her great, cruel Ca!
tllian eyes, and dazzled those who sa'
her. She was the daughter OF a Ver
/ Cruz merchant, Castilian of the clea
- ,fe,, ,-a.