The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch's Texas Rangers; or, the Summer and Fall Campaign of the Army of the United States in Mexico--1846; including Skirmishes with the Mexicans, and an accurate detail of the Storming of Monterey; also the Daring Scouts at Buena Vista together with anecdotes, incidents, descriptions of country, and sketches of the lives of the celebrated partisan chiefs, Hays, McCulloch, and Walker. Page: 39
251 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.View a full description of this book.
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PADRE'S ISLAND. 39
before we reached the island. The crossing-place is about twenty
miles distant from Corpus Christi, and is certainly the last place
in the world a stranger would have supposed to be a ford.
The Laguna del Madre, an arm of the sea which separates the
island from the main, is here about five miles wide, and it really
looks like going to sea on horseback when you wade off from the
land, and direct your course for the dimly seen shores of the
island. The waves beat up against our horses' sides, and it was
only with much difficulty that we could preserve our fire-arms
from contact with the salt water. The water was so deep that it
reached almost to our saddle-bows, and several of our horses narrowly
escaped being bogged in the quicksands, which lie in dangerous
proximity to the course of the ford. We waded across,
however, without any serious mishap, and encamped near nightfall
on the extreme northern point of the island. The next morning,
by the dawn of day, we were on the march along the
sea-beaten coast. The island is uninhabited save by one old man,
who follows the business of a wrecker, and lives not far from
Point Isabel, in a wild-looking place, which he calls, after himself,
" Tilley's Camp." To describe one day's travel on this island
will be sufficient. Starting early in the morning, and riding
until mid-day, we would stop to noon it, i. e. to cook our provisions
and graze our horses; resting an hour or two, we would then
continue our way along the interminable beach until we pitched
our camp at night. This monotonous course was pursued from
day to day, and never were a set of men or horses more heartily
tired of any one portion of this earth's surface, than we and our
steeds were of Padre's Island. The island is one hundred and
twenty-five miles long, and averages only a mile in width, containing
no sign of vegetation, save a species of sour wiry grass,
which our horses would only eat when compelled by hunger.
There is not a single tree throughout its whole extent. On all
sides is to be seen sand hillocks and sand wastes; and, taken
altogether, it is one of the most gloomy and desolate looking
places which it has ever been our bad fortune to visit. It seemed
to us to be a long slice from the western coast of the desert of
Sahara, detached by some convulsion of nature, and floated over
and anchored on the eastern shore of Mexico. How any human
being could ever voluntarily choose it as a place of residence, we
cannot conceive. Yet old Uncle Tilley" lives there, and emplys
himself in gathering the wrecks of cargoes with which the
beach is strewn, seeming perfectly happy in his loneliness, the
undisputed lord of this desert isle.
It is said, though since the commencement of the Mexican war,
that a small tribe of Irnians-the Carankawas-who once resided
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Reid, Samuel C., Jr. The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch's Texas Rangers; or, the Summer and Fall Campaign of the Army of the United States in Mexico--1846; including Skirmishes with the Mexicans, and an accurate detail of the Storming of Monterey; also the Daring Scouts at Buena Vista together with anecdotes, incidents, descriptions of country, and sketches of the lives of the celebrated partisan chiefs, Hays, McCulloch, and Walker., book, 1859; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth38096/m1/43/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.