It seems that to shoot a Winchester you have to pull a trigger one way and work a lever backward and forward; this would naturally suggest that there are three movements--one to throw out the empty shell, one to replace it with another cartridge, and the third to explode this cartridge. Captain Brooks, as far as I could make out from the sound, used only one movement for his entire eight shots. As I guessed, the trial was more to show Captain Brooks’s quickness rather than his marksmanship, and I paid no attention to the target, but devoted myself assiduously to manipulating the lever and trigger, aiming blankly at the prairie. When I had fired two shots into space, the captain had put his eight into the board. They sounded, as they went off, like fire-crackers well started in a barrel, and mine, in comparison, like minute-guns at sea. The Rangers, I found, after I saw more of them, could shoot as rapidly with a revolver as with a rifle, and had become so expert with the smaller weapon that instead of pressing the trigger for each shot, they would pull steadily on it, and snap the hammer until the six shots were exhausted. San Antonio is the oldest of Texan cities, and possesses historical and picturesque show-places which in any other country but our own would be visited by innumerable American tourists prepared to fall down and worship. The citizens of San Antonio do not, as a rule, appreciate the historical values of their city; they are rather tired of them. They would prefer you should look at the new Post-office and the City Hall, and ride on the cable road. But the missions which lie just outside of the city are what will bring the Eastern man or woman to San Antonio, and not the new water-works. There are four of these missions, the two largest and most interesting being the Mission de la Conception, of which the corner-stone was laid in 1730, and the Mission San José, the carving, or what remains of it, in the latter being wonderfully rich and effective. The Spaniards were forced to abandon the missions on account of the hostility of the Indians, and they have been occupied at different times since by troops and bats, and left to the mercies of the young men from “Rochester, N. Y.,” and the young women from “Dallas, Texas,” who have carved their immortal names over their walls just as freely as though they were the pyramids of Egypt or Blarney Castle. San Antonio is a great place for invalids, on account of its moderate climate, and a most satisfactory place in which to spend a week or two in the winter whether one is an invalid or not. There is the third largest army post in the country at the edge of the city, where there is much to see and many interesting people to know, and there is a good club, and cock-fighting on Sunday, and a first-rate theatre all the week. At night the men sit outside of the hotels, and the plazas are filled with Mexicans and their open-air restaurants, and