in fact, his journey to Texas, the theatre of the great work
for which his previous life had been a preparation. The thought of
Texas was not a new one to him. No man had watched the hitherto futile
efforts of that glorious land for freedom with greater interest; and
there is little doubt that Andrew Jackson was a sharer in all
Houston's Texan enthusiasms, and that he also quietly encouraged and
aided the efforts for its Americanization. Indeed, at that day Texas
was a name full of romance and mystery. Throughout the South and West,
up the great highway of the Mississippi, on the busy streets of New
York, and among the silent hills of New England, men spoke of the
charmed city of San Antonio as Europeans in the eighteenth century
spoke of Delhi and Agra and the Great Mogul. French traders went there
with fancy goods from New Orleans, and Spanish Dons from the wealthy
cities of Central Mexico came there to buy. From the villages of
Connecticut, from the woods of Tennessee, and the lagoons of the
Mississippi, adventurous Americans entered the Spanish-Texan Territory
at Nacogdoches, going through the land buying horses, and lending
their stout hearts and ready rifles to every effort for freedom which
the Texans made. For though the Americans were few in number and much
scattered, they were like the salt in a pottage, and men caught fire
and the idea of "freedom" from them.

Texas was at this time a territory of the Empire of Mexico, and Mexico
was making constant, though as yet ineffectual, efforts to become
independent. Twenty years before Houston entered Texas, a number of
Americans joined the priest Hidalgo in his struggle to make Mexico
free. They were all shot, but this did not hinder Magee and Bernardo,
with 1,200 Americans, raising the standard of liberty two years later.
This party took San Antonio, and the fame of their deeds brought young
Americans by hundreds to their aid; though they received no money, the
love of freedom and the love of adventure being their motive and their
reward.

But these brave paladins were soon followed by men who bought land and
made homes, and in 1821 Austin, with the sanction of the Spanish
Viceroy, introduced three hundred families, who received every
reasonable guarantee from the Spanish Government. They were scarcely
settled ere there was another Mexican revolt against Spain. This time
the Mexicans under Santa Anna achieved the independence of their
country, and a Mexican Republ