Davy is said to have gone to New Orleans, and is known to have visited Natchez, stirring up the more peaceable to active interest in the affairs of the Americans threatened by the new attitude of the Mexican Government. For three years all Mexican troops had been kept out of Texas; the latest news told of the coming of General Cos with a strong force, and the garrisoning of San Antonio by several hundred Mexican soldiers, selected, by orders from Santa Anna, from the lowest classes, men who were ever ready to cut throats, plunder, or insult the colonists. With the money subscribed, the gathering of supplies for the “inevitable conflict” went rapidly forward. The return of Stephen F. Austin, after eight months’ captivity in Mexican prisons, brought a new force into the field. The Americans cast bullets, looked to their priming, and built adobe forts under pretense of building homes. The slow ferment of racial hatred, the antipathies of men who worshipped God in different ways or not at all, the cherishing of the memories of murderous deeds on both sides, grew slowly into a flood of passion, fed by every heart-throb day and night. After various journeys along and about the Red River, Davy started for the front, where the old city of San Antonio de Bejar stood forever the centre of bloody tragedies and bitter strife. After being entertained in true Western style at Little Rock, he set forth for Fulton, one hundred and twenty miles across country. The citizens had given him a horse and saddle, and the company of four or five men, bound for Washita River, gave the party the appearance of a band of scouts. After a ride of fifty miles they drew near the river, when sounds of music were heard. “Hail Columbia” rolled across the fringe of alders along the banks, but when they raised their voices in a cheer the playing stopped, to again break into that old sad song of vanished hopes, “Over the Water to Charlie.” Putting spurs to their tired horses, they came to the river’s edge, to look upon the spectacle of a travelling parson whom they had seen at Little Rock, sitting in a sulky in the middle of the swirling stream. His horse could barely keep his feet, and yet the parson played with a composure that told of his faith in a higher power. He had fiddled for more than an hour, not daring to turn or venture on, and when he was rescued by Davy’s company he was about used up.