Our C a.t/10/.ic Heritage iu T cxas
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Rorete to La Baliia. The Marques de Rubi spent a week at Orcoquisac and set out for La Bahia on October 16. He crossed the Trinity in a canoe, just where the river enters a lake, and taking a northwest course, travelled that day four leagues. The following day they went more to the west and crossed Caramanchel Creek, continued along the valley of the San Jacinto and after going eight leagues crossed this stream on a barge a short distance above the battlefield of the engagement that was to decide Texas independence. On October 17. Rubi and his com- panions must have passed close to the present site of Houston. La Fora comments that during the night and all through the following day they were seriously bothered by "an infinite number of the most voracious mosquitoes" he had ever seen. Continuing their march along the coastal plain during the next three days the members of the expedition came to the Brazos River after going about twenty leagues, probably in the vicinity of present Richmond. On October 22, after having gone seventeen more leagues west, with inclination to the north, they came upon the road taken on the way out from San Antonio and arrived at the crossing on the Colorado near present Columbus. The river was high and had to be crossed in a canoe. The exhausting labor required two days. Seven horses and mules were drowned because of the steep banks of the stream. By the 28th, they had reached the Guadalupe which they crossed two leagues below the point on the outgoing march and with much more difficulty because of its high waters. From here they changed their course almost due south and going thirteen leagues, arrived in the Presidio of Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la Bahia on October 31, having passed by Mission Espiritu Santo a quarter of a league before and crossed the San Antonio River in a canoe. The garrison consisted of fifty soldiers. including the officers. There were forty-six families living in the vicinity and at the two missions. Mission Espiritu Santo had only twenty-three families with ninety-three persons. and Mission Nuestra Senora del Rosario. located two leagues up the river on its east bank, had seventy-one baptized Indians and thirty under instruction. Three Zacatecan missionaries tended the two missions. The presidio was twenty leagues from the coast by the most direct route, but the road was impassable in times of rain. Nevertheless the proximity to the sea was sufficient to make the location very unhealthy. Malaria ( tercianas) and the dreaded "111al de loanda" caused numerous
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