PAPERS OF ::VlmAnEAU BUON.Al'AHTE L.U[AR 139 friendship, valor and patriotism. 'rhe burning Deity of day looks not upon its equal in all his journey from the east to the west. It is im- possible to do justice to its external beauty by the ordinary language of prose. To describe it as it breaks upon the enraptmecl vision of the traveller would require the highest powers of poetic genius. Here is my friend Col: Gordon who by his peculiar taste has adorned and beautified your city with a garden that might vie with the Leaso[w]es of Shenstone, but if my friend will go with me to that bright Elisium of the West, I will shew him a boundless garden; a universal LeasoLw]es, where every hill is a flower-crowned lda, and every plain is the rnlley of 'l'empe. 0, when I stand upon the mountains of San Saba, aucl cast my eyes over the surrouuding country, where the lilly and the rose and every flower of Tyrian dies are spreading their beauty order [odor?] to the winds- where birds of the brightest plumage are pourin~ their melody to the music of the laughing waters- where the roe and the deer are lightly bounding together- where the butfaloe darken the distant horison with their numbers, and the firey )lustangs toss their manes to the wind aud make the \"ery earth to tremble beneath their wild stampede, I draw such "macling draughts of beauty to the soul" that I canuot refrain from baring my head to the Great Being of Benevolence, not only for spreading before me such soul-in- spiring scenes but also for euduing me with a capacity to appreciate the blessings and to eujoy them with gratitude. I have said that the sympathies in behalf of 'l'exas were not improp- erly bestowed. If her nautural beauties and resources may not cla.im so nrneh, l am sure I could make good the assertion if time would permit me to go into the details of history. The settlemen[t] of the country; the sufferiugs of the emigrants; the difficulties they had to encounter and the wronrrs which were heaped upon them, are all themes of thrilling intere~t; and I long to see them sketched with a graphic hand. I have nor time i10r talent for the task. All that I can Yenture to say on the present occasion may be comprisecl in very [few] words. It will be remembered that Yery shortly after )fexico had achieved her national Independence, a Hepublican go,·ernment was instituted on the Federative principles of the one under ,rhich you ha\'e the happiness to live. Iudeed she.adopted the Amrricnu Consti- tution as she found it with little or no alteration except the blotting out of one of the most salutary principles whieh that instrument con- tains- I mean Religious toleration. About the same time of h<'r or- ganization, she passed a ~ational Colonization Law, holding out lib- eral inducements to foreigners to occupy her waste domain. It was hy virtue of this inYitation that 'rexns became populated by citizens from this Hepublic. 'I.'he adrn11tages proposed were faYOurnble to the emi- grant, and I doubt not were~ offered by the government in good faith at_ a time when the ~pirit or libPrty prerniled in the nation: I .~my tl~1s, because I think injustice hns been done to ~lexh·o on this _po1_11t. :Ne,·ertheless, so soon as the new-settlers had rolled back the 1ml1n11 tribes to thf' rli:--tant frontiers, and the wihlerne:,:s hC>~:111 to bloom nrnl blm;som like the rose uncler american iudustrv, the 1\IC'xicans brrnmc jealous of their pros1;erity and increasing illtl.ti'ence; nnd ilrca(!in~ the spread of their free institutions and liberal principks, l'$[>Ct:tall_r on
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