At 11.30 A.M., M'Carthy drove me in his buggy to see the San
Pedro spring, which is inferior in beauty to the San Antonio spring. A troop of
Texan cavalry was bivouacked there.
We afterwards drove to the “missions” of San José and San Juan, six and
nine miles from the town. These were fortified convents for the conversion of
the Indians, and were built by the Jesuits about one hundred and seventy years
ago. They are now ruins, and the architecture is of the heavy Castilian style,
elaborately ornamented. These missions are very interesting, and there are two
more of them, which I did not see.
In the afternoon I saw many negroes and negresses parading
about in their Sunday clothes — silks and crinolines — much smarter than their
mistresses.
At 5 P.M. I dined with Colonel Bankhead, who gave an
entertainment, which in these hard times must have cost a mint of money. About
fourteen of the principal officers were invited; one of them was Captain Mason
(cousin to the London commissioner), who had served under Stonewall Jackson in
Virginia. He said that officer was by no means popular at first. I spent
a very agreeable evening, and heard many anecdotes of the war. One of the
officers sang the Abolition song, “John Brown,” together with its parody, “I'm
bound to be a soldier in the army of the South,” a Confederate marching – song,
and another parody, which is a Yankee marching-song, “We'll hang Jeff Davis on
a sour-apple tree.”
Whenever I have dined with Confederate officers they have
nearly always proposed the Queen's health, and never failed to pass the highest
eulogiums upon Her Majesty.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 52-3
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