The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 39, July 1935 - April, 1936 Page: 75

Book Reviews and Notices

and of his contemporary, Der Verein zum Schutze deutscher Ein-
wanderer in Texas. Each was ruined financially by his coloniza-
tion enterprise, but each opened the doors of hope and oppor-
tunity to thousands in bringing them to this new land.
The story of Castro's colonists is not satisfactory. The work
clearly is the product of much effort, but the results are not
organized. Some account is given of the hardships endured in
the early years, due to scarcity of money, droughts, crop failures,
isolation, Indian forays, etc. The establishment of church and
school in Castroville is told with some detail, but nothing is said
about how the other settlements fared. Some of the questions
that one would like to see treated in a work of this kind are
these: How many of the colonists were French? German? How
many Catholic? Protestant? What part did language and
religion play in choice of location? What were the occupations
of the colonists at home? In Texas? What effect had the prox-
imity of San Antonio? What were the relations of the colonists
with the Indians? And how did they differ from the relations
of Americans, Mexicans, and Germans and the Indians? What
have these colonists and their descendants accomplished in ninety
years?
The appendix contains (1) an account of the unveiling at Cas-
troville, October 11, 1931, of a monument to commemorate its
founding; (2) the reminiscences of Auguste Fretellibre of his
journey to Texas in 1843-44 with a group of Castro's colonists;
(3) a list showing name, age, occupation, financial worth, and
origin of those in the first group of Castro's colonists, shipped
in the Ebro from Havre, November 2, 1842; and (4) a list of
the sources consulted in the preparation of this work.
E. W. W.
Prose and Poetry of America. Edited by H. Ward McGraw.
Southwestern Edition. (Dallas: The L. W. Singer Com-
pany, 1934. Pp. xviii, 1198. Illustrations.)
Prose and Poetry of America is an anthology designed for high-
school study of American literature. The Southwestern Edition
includes three hundred pages of literature of the Southwest, pre-