260
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1859
The defendant appealed from the judgment of the New Orleans court in favor of Mussina. In 1855, the case was heard on appeal in the supreme court of the State of Louisiana, and was dismissed on a question of jurisdiction in the court. It was during the hearing of this appeal that Judge Watrous was at New Orleans under the assumed name of "John Jones," and lodging secretly at the Verandah Hotel. In order to continue understandingly the history, the narra- tive of which I have undertaken, it is necessarry here to make a momentary review of the positions occupied by the man Rey- nolds, who, it has been shown, was a prominent actor in the eventful drama of the conspiracy, so far as it appears to have progressed. It has been shown that he was one of the chief and choicest spirits in the inception of the New York company. It has been shown from the correspondence relative to the action of the court at New Orleans, that he had made the clerk of the court interested in the suit. It has been shown under what circumstances he established a bogus bank on the Cavazos grant. It has been shown that he was appointed by Judge Watrous, and acted ·as commissioner to take testimony in the Cavazos case, on the side of the defense, to defeat which, by collusion, was the evident purpose of the company of whom and in whose services he was. Thus we find this man Reynolds connected and intermixed with all that takes place through Judge Watrous's court, in the progress of the conspiracy in which both were so deeply and so criminally interested and implicated. I now present him as attempting to seize the "Great Salt Lake of Texas," the immense value of which and its location I have referred to. This lake was a reservation of the govern- ment of Texas, and the only possible means of appropriating this valuable property was by influencing the courts and the Legislature. It is shown by the letter of Mr. Joseph L. Williams, which I have read in another part of this case, and by the order of transfer to which I shall presently refer, that the three, Rey- nolds, Williams, and Watrous, at least, were interested in this fraudulent adventure. They had already been successful in the Phalen suits at New Orleans (wherein their fraudulent certificates were declared valid) ; and in the flush of their extreme success in this mat- ter, they were emboldened to extend their grasp, and to attempt to take by adventure every prize that their avarice could discover.
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