the Silver King. Frontiersmen will
tell you regretfully of the good old days forever gone, when the night
passed but dully if the cowboys did not shoot up all the saloons and
"hurdle" the gaming tables.

* * * * *

Yesterday, it was cowboy and mines in San Antonio. To-day, it is polo
and tourist; and the transition is a natural growth. One would hate to
think of the risks of the Long Trail, for miners from Old Mexico to Fort
Leavenworth, for cowboys from Fort Worth to Wyoming and St. Louis, and
not see the risks rewarded in fortunes to these trail makers. The cowboy
and miner of the olden days--the cowboy and miner who survived, that
is--are the capitalists taking their pleasure in San Antonio to-day. It
was natural that the cow pony bred to keeping its feet in mid-air, or on
earth, should develop into the finest type of polo pony ever known. For
years, the polo clubs of the North, Lenox, Long Island, Milbrook, have
made a regular business of scouring Texas for polo ponies. Horses giving
promise of good points would be picked up at $80, $100, $150. They would
then be rounded on a ranch and trained. San Antonio is situated almost
700 feet up on a high, clear plateau rimmed by blue ridges in the
distance. Recently, a polo ground of 3,200 acres has been laid out; and
the polo clubs of the North are to be invited to San Antonio for the
winter fiestas. As Fort Sam Houston boasts one of the best polo clubs of
the South, competition is likely to attract the sportsmen from far and
near.

You know how it is in all these new Western cities. They are feverish
with a mania of progress. They have grown so fast they cannot keep track
of their own hobble-de-hoy, sprawling limbs. They are drunk with
prosperity. In real estate alone, fortunes have come, as it were,
overnight. All this San Antonio has not escaped. They will tell you with
pardonable pride how this little cow town, where land wasn't worth two
cents an acre outside the Mission walls, has jumped to be a metropolitan
city of over 100,000; how it is the center of the great truck and
irrigation farm district. Fort Sam Houston always has 700 or 800
soldiers in garrison, and sometimes has as many as 4,000; and when army
maneuvers take place, there is an immense reservation outside the city
where as many as 20,000 men can practice mimic war. The day of two cents
or even $20 an acre land round San Antonio is forever past. Land under
the ditch is to