In Nacogdoches there is a wonderful elm, a tree which stood in the primeval forest perhaps before the foot of the white man ever trod its paths. Its leafy branches toss in the wind, green and beautiful against the blue sky. Its old trunk has turned into sap for its own growth the sunshine of more years than any living man can remember.  
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As a springing sapling it may have greeted Hernando de Soto on his westward march. It may have looked down on La Salle journeying through the forest to his untimely death; and on Tonti of the Iron Hand, seeking tidings of his murdered friend. Don Ramon, lying in its shade, may have watched the slow building of the Mission of Our Lady of Nacogdoches; and St. Denis, riding by, may have paused to cut switches from its down-drooping branches. Nolan, Herrera, Magee, Long, many a soldier, and many an Indian chief in his war-paint and feathers,—all these the old tree has seen come and go.
 
A soldier of another sort stood in its shade one day in 1821, and looked upon the small yet motley group of people gathered about him. There were a dozen or more frontiersmen, bronzed and bearded, and armed to the teeth; there were a few Mexican soldiers, a Mexican woman or two with coarse mant............