548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But affairs had become too much disturbed for the undertaking 

 to be safe, and he was stopped before he had made more than a 

 few days' journey. Life at his ranch was imperiled by Indian 

 depredations, and he was obliged to abandon all even his books 

 and his precious collections of Secondary and Tertiary fossils, his 

 field and his cattle and return to the towns. At Austin he was 

 invited to join the staff of the Confederate army, to help supply a 

 seriously felt lack of scientifically educated officers, with the in- 

 ducement added that he would thereby be enabled to avoid requi- 

 sitions. He answered : " I would sooner cut off my right hand 

 than serve that cause. Let the requisitions come; they may 

 watch me as an obdurate or make a prisoner of me, but a soldier 

 of the planters never ! " He returned to San Antonio, where he 

 hoped to be able to weather the storm in obscurity ; but, being 

 threatened with a conscription, he claimed the protection of the 

 Belgian consul at New Orleans, without effect. There was a pow- 

 erful party in the region opposed to the Confederacy, and he 

 allied himself with it. Then came the arrest, in October, 1861, of 

 Mr. Charles Anderson, Unionist, at the head-waters of the Rio 

 San Antonio, with the accounts of which the papers of the time 

 were filled. Houzeau, with a Northern lady, his neighbor, formed 

 a plan to rescue Mr. Anderson, and carried it out with admirable 

 daring and brilliant success, himself accompanying the suspect on 

 horseback at night to a point down the river, whence a straight 

 road led to freedom, and taking care of his business papers. 

 Desperate but vain efforts were made to discover the " traitor " 

 who had helped Mr. Anderson off. 



In February, 1862, Houzeau learned that the Vigilance Com- 

 mittee were about to make a descent upon him. He had com- 

 promised himself by defending the freedom of the negroes whom 

 Anderson had set free to prevent their being sold by Confederate 

 officials. He prepared to flee, first taking care to write an account 

 of the rescue of Anderson. Knowing that the Unionist party de- 

 sired to send a memorial to the President of the United States, 

 and wishing to be useful to them before going off, he told them 

 that if they would prepare the memorial he would take charge of 

 it. Not being able to carry his own papers with him, he burned 

 them, for there was not a leaf among them, he said, that did not 

 contain something in condemnation of slavery. With the Union- 

 ist memorial stuffed in the barrel of his shot-gun, he started off 

 under the guise of Carlos Uso, Mexican driver of six oxen, in the 

 train of Alejandro Vidal, for Brownsville and Matamoras. The 

 story of the journey of thirty-five days, as told by him in his cor- 

 respondence, reads like a chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabin. He had 

 to remain in Matamoras nearly a year, till January, 1863, waiting 

 for the French blockade to be raised, before he was able to take 



