PREFACE
In the series commencing with the present volume GUSTAVE AIMARD has entirely changed the character of his stories. He has selected a magnificent episode of American history, the liberation of Texas from the intolerable yoke of the Mexicans, and describes scenes quorum pars magna fuit. At the present moment, when all are watching with bated breath the results of the internecine war commencing between North and South, I believe that the volumes our author devotes to this subject will be read with special interest, for they impart much valuable information about the character of the combatants who will, to a great extent, form the nucleus of the confederated army. The North looks down on them with contempt, and calls them "Border ruffians;" but when the moment arrives, I entertain no doubt but that they will command respect by the brilliancy of their deeds.
Surprising though the events may be which are narrated in the present volume, they are surpassed by those that continue the series. The next volume, shortly to appear under the title of "The Freebooters," describes the progress of the insurrection till it attained the proportions of a revolution, while the third and last volume will be devoted to the establishment of order in that magnificent State of Texas, which has cast in its lot with the Secessionists, and will indubitably hold out to the very last, confident in the prowess of its sons, whose fathers Aimard has so admirably depicted in the present and the succeeding volumes of the new series.
L.W.
The immense virgin forests which once covered the soil of North America are more and more disappearing before the busy axes of the squatters and pioneers, whose insatiable activity removes the desert frontier further and further to the west.
Flourishing towns, well tilled and carefully-sown fields, now occupy regions where, scarce ten years ago, rose impenetrable forests, whose dense foliage hardly allowed the sunbeams to penetrate, and whose unexplored depths sheltered animals of every description, and served as a retreat for hordes of nomadic Indians, who, in their martial ardour, frequently caused these majestic domes of verdure to re-echo with their war-yell.
Now that the forests have fallen, their gloomy denizens, gradually repulsed by the civilization that incessantly pursues them, have fled step by step before it, and have sought far away other and safer retreats, to which they have borne the bones of their fathers with them, lest they might be dug up and desecrated by the inexorable ploughshare of the white men, as it traces its long and productive furrow over their old hunting-grounds.
Is this constant disafforesting and clearing of the American continent a misfortune? Certainly not: on the contrary, the progress which marches with a giant's step, and tends, before a century, to transform the soil of the New World, possesses all our sympathy; still we cannot refrain from a feeling of pained commiseration for that unfortunate race which is brutally placed beyond the pale of the law, and pitilessly tracked in all directions; which is daily diminishing, and is fatally condemned soon to disappear from that earth whose immense territory it covered less than four centuries ago with innumerable tribes.
Perhaps if the people chosen by God to effect the changes to which we allude had understood their mission, they might have converted a work of blood and carnage into one of peace and paternity, and arming themselves with the divine precepts of the Gospel, instead of seizing rifles, torches, and scalping-knives, they might, in a given time, have produced a fusion of the white and red races, and have attained a result more profitable to progress, civilization, and before all, to that great fraternity of nations which no one is permitted to despise, and for which those who forget its divine and sacred precepts will have a terrible account some day to render.
Men cannot become with impunity the murderers of an entire race, and constantly wade in blood; for that blood must at some time cry for vengeance, and the day of justice break, when the sword will be cast in the balance between conquerors and conquered.
At the period when our narrative commences, that is to say, about the close of 1812, the emigration had not yet assumed that immense extension which it was soon to acquire, for it was only beginning, as it were, and the immense forests that stretched out and covered an enormous space between the borders of the United States and Mexico, were only traversed by the furtive footsteps of traders and wood-rangers, or by the silent moccasins of the Redskins.
It is in the centre of one of the immense forests to which we have alluded that our story begins, at about three in the afternoon of October 27th, 1812.
The heat had been stifling under the covert, but at this moment the sunbeams growing more and more oblique, lengthened the tall shadows of the trees, and the evening breeze that was beginning to rise refreshed the atmosphere, and carried far away the clouds of mosquitoes which during the whole mid-day had buzzed over the marshes in the clearings.
