V. GOLIAD. (1835-1836.) 1. MESSENGERS OF DISTRESS. On the 20th of December, 1835, there was a spirited meeting of citizens and soldiers at the old town of La Bahia (Goliad) on the San Antonio River. La Bahia—which means “the bay”—was already old when Austin laid off his town on the Brazos. Captain Alonzo de Leon, on his way to attack La Salle at Fort St. Louis in 1689, stopped there; and in 1718 Don Domingo Ramon with his troopers and friars built there the Mission of Espiritu Santo (The Holy Ghost) for the benefit of the fierce Carankawae Indians. The town had seen stirring times during the century and a half of its existence. There had been many Indian fights in and around the mission church, when the garrison was weak and the priests could not control their red-skinned converts; it was in the same church in 1812 that Magee’s army was besieged, and from its doors his Republicans sallied forth to their victorious hand-to-hand conflict with the Spaniards. Here, too, in 1819, General Long surrendered to the Mexicans and was carried away to a treacherous death. And here in October, 1835, the Mexican commandant Sandoval had been surprised in his sleep by the Texans, his soldiers made prisoners, and the fort and its stores handed over to his captors. The General Consultation at San Felipe in November, 1835, had thought it more prudent to declare their adherence to the Mexican republican constitution than to issue a declaration of independence. The citizens and soldiers of Goliad, on the 20th of December following, boldly set their names to a document resolving “that the former state and department of Texas is and ought to be _a free, sovereign, and independent state_.” Among the signers were several boys fifteen and sixteen years of age. This paper was sent to the governor and his council at San Felipe by whom it was disapproved and suppressed. They thought it premature. But it was a straw that showed which way the revolutionary wind was blowing. Captain Philip Dimitt, who was at the head of this movement, was commandant at the fortress at Goliad with about eighty men under his command. Over at San Antonio at this time, there was much dissatisfaction among the volunteers remaining there. They were more restless than ever, with their own flag waving above the Alamo and no enemy in sight. They had left their homes and firesides for a purpose. It was fighting they were eager for, not idling around a camp-fire.