CHAPTER IV

"Time the supreme! Time is eternity,
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
With all that makes archangels smile
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal."

YOUNG.


A year had passed away. "How paradoxical is the signification of the
term!" How vast, when we consider that each hour hastens the end
of our pilgrimage! How insignificant in comparison with futurity! A
single drop in the boundless deep of eternity! Oh Time! thou greatest
of all anomalies! Friend yet foe, "preserver and yet destroyer!"
Whence art thou, great immemorial? When shall thy wondrous mechanism
be dissolved? When shall the "pall of obscurity" descend on thy
Herculean net-work? Voices of the past echo through thy deserted
temples, and shriek along thy bulwarks--Never, no never!

Season had followed season in rapid succession, and the last rays
of an August sun illumined a scene so beautiful, that I long for
the pencil of a Claude Lorraine. It was a far-off town, in a far-off
state, yet who has gazed on thy loveliness, oh, San Antonio, can e'er
forget thee! Thine was the sweetness of nature; no munificent hand had
arranged, with artistic skill, a statue here, a fountain there.

The river wound like an azure girdle round the town; not confined