Note III'-6 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: THROUGH TEXAS TO NATCHITOCHES ON THE RED RIVER OF LOUISIANA, JUNE 1ST-JULY 1ST, 1807.

The trip from the Rio Grande to the San Antonio r. made about 151 m. by Pike's estimates, serving to show the course of the old Spanish trail as the most direct route then practicable. Pike's Mariano is now called Medina r.; on this is Castroville, seat of Medina Co., and the river mostly separates this county from Bexar Co. Pike sets San Antonio on the N. bank of an affluent of a fork large enough to look as if it were Rio Cibolo; but this last comes in much further down the San Antonio, and no doubt he intended simply to delineate the small forked San Pedro, on one of whose branches the city was situated. The San Antonio itself is represented as joining the Guadalupe high up; but these two great rivers only come together as they approach the coast, to fall into Espiritu Santo bay opposite Matagorda isl., between Indianola and Arkansas City. On some old maps, as that in Winterbotham's History, 1795, San Antonio is set on a stream called Rio Hondo, which is run separately into the Gulf of Mexico between the Nueces and the Guadalupe. The early importance of the Mariano or Medina r. as a political boundary ceased of course with the retirement of Coahuila beyond the Rio Grande, and thus the extension of Texan territory, through what had been Coahuilan territory, to New Mexico. The city was formerly more fully called San Antonio de Bexar, Bejar, Behar, Bexer, etc., to distinguish it from uncounted other places dedicated to the patron saint of highways by highwaymen and other persons, and is still the seat of Bexar Co.; pop. lately 37,673 (scarcely less than that of Dallas). The mission of "St. Joseph," commonly called San José, is figured on p. 69 of Major Emory's reports, probably looking much as it did when Pike was received there by the priest; and the steel engraving which forms the frontispiece of the same volume shows the plaza of the city. San Antonio is a very old place, having been occupied for military and ecclesiastical purposes before 1720, was long the most important one in Texas, was styled Thermopylæ of Texas after the massacre of Texans by Mexicans at Fort Alamo, Mar. 6th, 1836, and is now the second in size, though the capital of the present State is Austin, on the Rio Colorado of Texas.