Quick shots of Copano Bay at the mouth of the Aransas River and of the Mission River a few miles away, looking downstream towards the bay, this maybe fifteen miles below Refugio.

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

Fannin, King, Ward and the Georgia Battalion all landed in this area, as well as General Cos and his army. Same thing with the Irish immigrants at Refugio and San Patricio.

Get off pavement and this becomes hazardous and difficult country to navigate even today. Sailing those unwieldy merchant ships past all the shifting sandbars along that labyrinthine coast must have been no mean trick. Even after landing one still had to traverse miles of often waterlogged and overgrown wetlands and prairie, through clouds of saltmarsh mosquitoes.

Throw in the presence of the tall, naked and fish oil-smeared Karankawas, known to cut off and eat slices of their victims while they were yet alive.

To newcomers from more pleasant and familiar climes the whole area must have been a sort of Hell.

Imagine the effect on the Irish immigrants. It is said that part of the reason they settled at Refugio is that their women were scared so badly by the country in general and and by an encounter with a band of aggressively pilfering Lipan Apaches in particular that for weeks they refused to leave the sanctuary of the old mission.

Birdwatcher

"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744