NOTES AND FRAGMENTS.

Mr. W. R. Smith, who holds a fellowship in history for the year 1898-9 from Columbia University, will work on the colonial history of South Carolina. He expects to go to Columbia about the first of August, in order to begin work.

Mr. W. F. McCaleb, who was mentioned in The Quarterly for April as having been awarded a traveling fellowship by the University of Chicago, is now in Mexico. Mr. I. J. Cox, of the San Antonio Academy, will work with him during the summer. Their ultimate destination is the City of Mexico, where Mr. McCaleb expects to spend most of the year, but it is their intention to make stops more or less lengthy at other places in which there are archives of value for the history of the Southwest, especially at Chihuahua, Saltillo, and Querétaro. They are traveling on bicycles, and will doubtless learn much of Mexico as it is, as well as of Southwestern history, before their return to Texas.

Mr. L. G. Bugbee is spending his vacation at work in the Bexar archives at San Antonio. These archives include a very large amount of material for the history of Texas previous to the Revolution, of which but little use has hitherto been made. Perhaps The Quarterly will be able, before very much longer, to publish a sufficient description of them to show the nature and value of their contents.

Professor Garrison has announced as the subject of the graduate course in history in the State University for 1898-9, “The Texas Revolution.” It is his intention to spend the summer in gathering and classifying materials for this course. He hopes to work several weeks in the collection of Col. Guy M. Bryan, at Quintana, and the remainder of the vacation in the State library. Any one having in his possession unpublished material relative to this period of Texas history will confer a great favor upon Professor Garrison by informing him of the fact and describing the documents, and especially by giving him an opportunity to use and copy them. Official papers, diaries, private letters, and various other kinds of documents are all useful in historical investigation. The citizens of Texas are certainly much interested in determining the true history of the State. They ought, therefore, to give those who undertake this work in the University all possible help.

The readers of The Quarterly will be grieved to hear of the death of Miss Brownie Ponton, which occurred at Muscogee, Indian Territory, July 10. She was spending the summer with relatives, when she was stricken with illness, which, after about ten days, resulted in her death.

Miss Ponton had just completed her junior year at the University of Texas. She was an excellent student, and showed special aptness for historical investigation. The paper on Cabeça de Vaca's Wanderings in Texas, which was prepared by herself and Mr. Bates H. McFarland, working jointly, and was read at the last midwinter meeting of the Association, and published in The Quarterly for January, attracted much attention, and elicited favorable comment from a number of experts, together with a very inconsiderate and unjust sneer from one who seems to have the public confidence, but who must have misunderstood the real import of the article. She gave promise of becoming an elegant and forcible writer, as well as a successful investigator; but the pen has fallen from her grasp, and her work is done.

The collection of Ex-Governor Roberts, one of the most valuable relating to Texas history ever gathered, is bequeathed to the State University, in which he was so greatly interested, and for which he has done so much. The best part of his collection is in manuscript, and consists of a diary kept by the testator from 1858 to 1865, together with an extensive and carefully preserved correspondence with most of the men who have been prominent in Texas during the last sixty years. The Roberts Papers are a treasure, and will doubtless be treated as such by the University authorities.

The death, by an unfortunate accident, of Col. J. K. Holland, a few weeks since, takes from the State one of its prominent historical characters. He came to Texas during the early days of the Republic; was a member of the House of Representatives, and of the Senate, subsequent to annexation and previous to the Civil War; was on intimate terms with most of the well-known public men of the Republic and the State; and has been, in various ways, identified with the history of Texas through both periods. He took great interest in the Association, and it has been placed under obligations to him for many favors.

David Shelby.—The name given in Baker's Texas Scrap-Book, in the list of the “Old Three Hundred,” as David Shelly, should be David Shelby. It is correctly printed in the list given by Lester G. Bugbee in The Quarterly for October, 1897.

The Alleged Abandonment of Children at Plum Creek.—In justice to our comrades who have passed away, we beg leave, as three participants in the battle of Plum Creek, with the Indians, on the 12th day of August, 1840, to emphatically deny a report which has been circulated and published, to the effect that after the battle of Plum Creek, there were thrity-three children, whose parents were murdered in the Indian raid down the Guadalupe, left on the battle field and gathered up and taken to San Antonio by the Sisters of Charity of that place and raised and educated by them.

We regret exceedingly that this report has been circulated, as it is a reflection on the old Texans, and would be a blot on Texas' history.

A. J. Berry,  Robert Hall,  J. W. Darlington.

Concerning Saint-Denis.—The Mission San Juan Bautista, situated on the small stream called Costaños, about six miles west of the Rio Grande, and about twenty-five miles below Piedras Negras, now Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, was first founded in 1699, some distance from where it now stands; but, being abandoned by the tribes first settled there, it was re-established where it now stands in 1701. In the same year, the Conde Valladores made the place a presidio, with the name of Presidio de San Juan, Bautista putting there a small garrison of Spanish troops. And from that time it has maintained its existence in the same place, thought its name was changed by an act of the State Congress of May 18th, 1835, to Villa de Guerrero; yet it is generally known as Presidio Rio Grande.

The mission building, now the cathedral of the place, has been well preserved, and may still contain the early archives relating to the mission, including the marriage of Saint-Denis to the niece of Captain Ramon.

The accusation of Saint-Denis, his trial, acquittal, its approval by the Viceroy, and the revocation and his condemnation as a spy by the Consejo de Indias, and final sentence to imprisonment, with his wife, in Guatemala, may also be found in the Archivo General at Mexico.

The famous Acordada, where Arnuto Arroyo was killed on the night of the sixteenth of September last, after his attempt to assassinate Porfirio Diaz, is the same in which Saint-Denis was confined for some time, and his name may possibly be found on the roster, with a note of his sentence, and when he was taken away for Guatemala. This prison stands on the west side of the great square, south of the principal cathedral, commonly called el Zocalo, on account of the Aztec Zocalo standing there, and generally believed to be the place where human beings were formerly sacrificed to the Aztec god of war.

Much of the real facts of early Texas history may be found in the General Archive, among the various reports of the Spanish officers who were here in different capacities; but hitherto there has not been any considerable interest manifested in such sources of knowledge of the past of a country now reckoned among the greatest States of the American Union. Not even the chart of the Gulf Coast, from Cape Florida to Pánuco, made by two mariners, sent out by the King, in 1540, has been copied into the archives of Texas; and the cavalry expedition of Captain Sancho Caniegas, in 1528, from Pánuco to forty leagues north of the mouth of the Rio Grande, possibly to the point now known as Flour Bluff, has been overlooked by our historians, though the report of it has a place in the history of New Spain, as well as in the “Noticias Historicas de Nuño Guzman,” who was then governor of the Province of Pánuco.

The archives at Monclova, Saltillo, San Luis Potosi, and Mexico all contain data for Texas history worthy of a place in our records, to enable the future historian to brush away many blunders found in writings extant to-day; such as that Saint-Denis laid out the old San Antonio Road, and the story of the origin and first site of the Presidio “La Bahia del Espiritu Santo,” now standing on the right margin of the San Antonio River, and many others of like character.

A properly directed examination of the public archives of different places in Mexico, would furnish material for the works of writers of history never yet touched, and show much in its true light that has hitherto been but partially treated; and the advantages to be derived would richly compensate for the labor and money expended in making it.

Bethel Coopwood.