The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1909-11-05

years from 1887 gave Spain her
claim over Texas and shaped the course
of events in which the history of that
dominion is written in letters of Grim
son.
'The French LaSalle, after ten years
of fruitless and arduous search, discov-
cred the upper Mississippi from Can
ada, i'll 1852, and sailed down between
its gradually widening banks till the
Gulf of Mexico opened its blue vistas
before him. Here he took possession
of the land for Louis XIV, with the
firing of guns, waving of flags, raising
of a column, and buying commem-
orative leaden plate. Up the river,
back to Canada, on to France, was the
ensuing pilgrimage of the dauntless
LaSalle, of whom one of his party
writes, ''to him dangers and Difficult
ties We're but spurs to further effort,
and made him more resolute than
ever His overmastering desire was
to found q colony on the Mississippi,
yet fate willed that he should not be
the founder of Louisiana, but the dis
coverer of Texas. Instead of coming
10 his "AIiche Sepe" las the early
by way of Canada southwark, LaSalle
and the four ships granted him by
the French King directed their course
to the Gulf OF Mexico, intending to
sail northward on the rivers bosom.
With no charts or soundings, LaSalle
and three of his ships, with three
hundred souls (for the store ship, the
Saint Francis, had been captured by
the Spaniards) sailed five hundred
miles west of the mouth of the Mis-
sissippi-and reached Texas. In Mata-
gorda Bay, by the LaVaca river, nam
ed from the buffalo COW gazing on
its banks, rose Fort st. Louis-block-
house, chapel, barracks, guard room
the first settlement in Texas.
Before the Spaniards in 1856,
stirred by the token of the capture of
LaSalle's flagship, had located the in
FAINT settlement and appeared at its
gate, Fort ST. Louis had joined the
number of lost Colonies" with their
unspoken tragedies, and LaSalle's dis
honored body was lying in an unknown
grave near the Neches river He had
sought help for the waning colony
from Canada, but conspiracy and vio-
lence were rife among his disaffected
followers, and he and his nearest adj
herents were massacrcd, after God
as he said at the last, had saved him
from so many perils, during more than
twenty years of travel in America
having endured the rage of man and
the elements, the southern sum- the
northern blast, fatigue, famine and
disease, delay, disappointment and de-
fcrred hope Thus persisted the first
Iof that long line of heroes whose
blood, shed TO rthe common veal, has
truly made Texas the ''brave world"
in a wider truer sense than ShaFes-
peare knew, in its Elizabethan meaning.
"The new Philippines, as Texas was
called, and Louisiana were near reign
bors, and love and hate; conquest and
reconquest, intermarriages and battles,
between these warning colonies marked
the course of years. Spain had for her
most efficient and fearless helpers the
good padres-the Franciscans who
marched in the van of soldiers and
discoveries, to carry the cross of peace
by the side of the blood stained sword!
! Mission fortresses rose above the smil-
| ing lands; between TIA and l744, a
dozen missions were erected in Texas,
some of which, majestic in decay, still
evince what Mission architecture could
be in its palmy days.
The New Empire.
"The remarkable courage, persistence
and hardihood of the brave world of
Texas during its revolution and for