Excerpt from La Belle San Antone The beautiful, boundless, and breezy realm of old Texas! How well beloved by her own since the first days of her coming to us, full of wild possibilities and daring adventure; her escutcheon baptized in the blood of the Spanish and Mexican wars, and the period of her annexation, so rife with the stench of unparalleled atrocities in the murder of her noble martyrs, her banners tattered and torn, and the star of her destiny, rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the past, to grow for a brighter fate, a better day. Come with me, and as we tread the bloom of her flower-strewn prairies and the burning sands of her lonely plains I will tell you about the hearts of her men and women, so true and loving and so unchanging in their fidelity; faithful, courageous and enduring; ever ready to extend their hospitality to the strangers at their doors, or to let their life-blood flow for loved ones endangered. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.