26th April (Sunday).—At 11.30 A.M., McCarthy drove me in his buggy to see the San Pedro spring, which is inferior in beauty to the San Antonio spring. A troop of Texan cavalry was bivouacked there.
We afterwards drove to the “missions” of San Jose” and San Juan, six and nine miles from the town. These were fortified convents for the conversion of the Indians, and were built by the Jesuits about one hundred and seventy years ago. They are now ruins, and the architecture is of the heavy Castilian style, elaborately ornamented. These missions are very interesting, and there are two more of them, which I did not see.
In the afternoon I saw many negroes and negresses parading about in their Sunday clothes—silks and crinolines—much smarter than their mistresses.
At 5 P.M. I dined with Colonel Bankhead, who gave an entertainment, which in these hard times must have cost a mint of money. About fourteen of the principal officers were invited; one of them was Captain Mason (cousin to the London commissioner), who had served under Stonewall Jackson in Virginia. He said that officer was by no means popular at first. I spent a very agreeable evening, and heard many anecdotes of the war. One of the officers sang the Abolition song, “John Brown,” together with its parody, “I’m bound to be a soldier in the army of the South,” a Confederate marching-song, and another parody, which is a Yankee marching-song, “We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.”
Whenever I have dined with Confederate officers they have nearly always proposed the Queen’s health, and never failed to pass the highest eulogiums upon Her Majesty.
