Captain De Leon and his hundred soldiers marched gaily and confidently from Monclova in a northeasterly direction, across wild prairie and savage woodland. They were used to the ways of the Comanches, through whose hunting grounds they marched, and, at need, could take scalp for scalp; they were well fed and comfortably clad; the King’s pay jingled in their pockets,—a brave contrast truly to the starved, ragged, disheartened colonists at Fort St. Louis! But when Captain De Leon and his men at length found the fort, the unfortunate French colonists, like their chief, had perished. Their bleaching bones lay scattered about the door of the blockhouse, where they had made their last desperate stand against the bloodthirsty Carankawaes. De Leon’s heart stirred with pity as he looked about him, thinking less, perhaps, of the men—for it is a soldier’s business to die—than of the delicate women who had shared their fate. With the Cenis, into whose friendly wigwams they had escaped at the time of the massacre, De Leon found several of the colonists. These were afterwards sent back to their homes in France. But among them there is no mention of the Sieur Barbier and his young bride. [Illustration: The Flag of Spain.] De Leon, it is said,—though this is a much disputed fact,—called the country about Fort St. Louis Texas, because of his kindly treatment by the Cenis Indians, the word _Texas_ in their tongue meaning friends.[6] On his return to Monclova, he pictured this Texas as a paradise so fertile and so beautiful that the viceroy determined to establish there a mission and presidio,—that is to say, a church and stronghold,—for the double purpose of reducing and converting the Indians. In 1690 Captain De Leon, with several priests added to his company of soldiers, marched again to Fort St. Louis. The broken walls were restored, and once more the air rang with the cheerful sounds of axe and hammer. The Mission of San Francisco was begun and dedicated; the Spanish flag fluttered in the breeze; a hymn of praise and thanksgiving arose from the chapel; and De Leon took formal possession of the country in the name of the King of Spain. The Spaniards, harried by the Indians and too far from Monclova to receive regular supplies, were soon forced to abandon Fort St. Louis. Great was the rejoicing among the Lipans and the Carankawaes when the pale faces disappeared from among them, leaving the bay once more free to their own canoes, the prairies open to their moccasined feet. Neither France nor Spain for a time seemed inclined to trouble herself further about this disputed property.