The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923 Page: 215
324 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath
me, I was no winebibber. I even had a distaste for the beer of
my native land, and had incurred the censure of patriotic country-
men in Wiirtemberg for not being one of them in this respect.
With the cholera at its height, with over two thousand deaths
a day, Paris was somewhat dull and the much talked of counter
revolution a hoax, and I left after a few days. I found the chol-
era ahead of me at Rouen, and got on quickly to Havre, from
which place the American brig Motion, owned in Baltimore, was
to sail in a few days for New Orleans. As an objective point in
the United States I considered New Orleans better than New
York; from the first mentioned, if I should not like the United
States, I could go more quickly into Mexico, the land toward
which my inclination was most set at that time. The fare, too,
was fifty francs less to New Orleans than to New York, though
New Orleans was fifteen hundred miles farther. So to New
Orleans I engaged passage-steerage-at once. The brig I think
brought cotton to France, and not getting any other freight to
carry back arranged to take passengers. Of these there were per-
haps one hundred and more, German and French. No trouble
as to passports came up, and we sailed out with the rising tide
at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 18th of April.
Now that I am done with Europe, a few statements as to how
I was placed when I left there. With nothing to expect from
my native Austria but despotism, I felt little regret in leaving;
I had ever been considered an alien in Wiirtemberg though that
country, I admit, had a free government as compared with other
parts of Germany. But it has been a matter of much regret to
me that I came away without seeing my mother. She was in
distressed circumstance, too, when I last heard from her while
in Wiirtemberg. My letters to her had to be directed to the care
of an old friend, a school teacher, who was helping the family
and teaching my youngest brother. But hatred of Austrian des-
potism had been early instilled into me; to return home meant
but to submit to it. After reaching the United States, before
coming to Texas, I sought a priest with the intention of asking
him to take some letters home to my mother; I had heard that
he was on the eve of departure for Vienna; but he met me sharply,
lecturing me on my not coming to church, and I, with my tem-
per up, left him without asking the favor. Later in Texas, I215
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923, periodical, 1923; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101084/m1/221/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.