test the value of the defense," reported Colonel Freeman.[12]  "The country from San Antonio," wrote a Texan volunteer in the Mexican War, "is not fit for a hog to live in -- nothing but a sandy desert . . . no house from San Patricia to Goliad -- none on the other side of Goliad for a long distance";[13]  and General Vicente Filisola, who had ample reason for disliking Texas in 1836, pronounced it a country of "mud and sand," and left it, never to return.[14]  While in command of the military forces at Mexico City on December 25, 1839, Filisola, when asked by a friend, "What of Texas?" is alleged to have shaken his head, screwed up his shoulders and replied, "My Friend, Texas is lost to Mexico. We will never be able to retake it."[15]  Many of the rank and file among the Mexican troops of 1836 "swore they would never enter Texas again."[16]  And to ex-President Lamar, embittered in 1847 by years of political strife, Texas was "very little more than Big Drunk's big Ranch."[17] 

The face of the country from San Antonio to the Río del Norte [Río Grande] is very uniform, [wrote Thomas W. Bell, a member of the Mier Expedition] it consists of prairies covered with the finest grass, and generally the shrubby musquit growing over it. Sometimes these shrubs in common with Prickly pear, or as the Mexicans term it the nopal, cover the whole face of the country. . . . The soil is generally fertile and particularly the vallies, which are extremely productive. On these wild and luxuriant pastures nurtured alone by nature's care, roam undisturbed, thousands of wild Cattle, Buffalo and Mustangs. Not far to the northward sets in a