We have already related how the adventurous La Salle, when endeavouring to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, mistook his reckoning, and entered the bay of Matagorda instead. This gave the French nation a claim to Texas. The fort built by the unfortunate La Salle was soon demolished by the Indians, and the Spaniards from their neighbouring Mexico disputed also the French right of possession, they claiming the whole of this coast as a portion of their own territory. The first permanent settlement of the whites in Texas was by the Spaniards, in 1684, when, under San Antonio de Bexar, the fort of that name was established. In 1719 also a colony settled there from the Canary Isles. Various missionary stations and military posts were also established at different places, so that the Spaniards became the assured possessors of the country, with an increasing population. The missionary stations, unlike the simple log-huts and chapels of the early French jesuits, were massive fortresses of stone, the churches decorated with images of saints and paintings, and surmounted by enormous towers. The ruins of several of these vast erections still remain in various parts of Texas, and produce a very striking effect, especially in a country where the traces of civilised life are so scanty. The Spanish population of Texas was, however, inconsiderable at the time of the Mexican revolution in 1810, owing to the incursions of the savage Comanches and other Indian tribes, and to the police regulations of the Spanish government. As regards the relative positions and feelings of the Mexican government and that of the United States, we will give a few remarks from an American writer.[82] “The Mexican authorities were not so desirous of occupying Texas as of keeping her a desolate waste; that she might present an impassable barrier between themselves and their Anglo-American neighbours. The cause of this is not of difficult solution, and is derived from the old mother-country. At the time when Mexico was first colonised, Spain was at the head of the Roman Catholic countries, and all heretics were held in abhorrence by her, and exterminated by the inquisition and the sword. The changes which knowledge and general enlightenment have produced in the Protestant world universally, and even in the Catholic when it has been forced into closer contact with progressive opinion, have not reached Mexico, which has been shut up as it were, and which has jealously retained all her native aversions, prejudices and jealousies. Besides which, Mexico as a colony belonged less to the Spanish nation than to the Spanish kings, and was governed by their viceroys, regardless of the well-being of the people, merely as an estate to produce a revenue. No possible rivalry with the mother-country was permitted; meanwhile the mines were industriously worked, no commerce was permitted to the Mexicans, nor might they rear the silkworm or plant the olive or the vine.