THE FALL OFTHE ALAMO ~ page 2
Before beginning the narrative, however, I must describe the Alamo and its surroundings as they existed in the spring of 1836. San Antonio, then a town of about 7,000 inhabitants, had a Mexican population, a minority of which was well affected to the cause of Texas, while the rest were inclined to make the easiest terms they could with which ever side might be for the time being dominant. The San Antonio River, which, properly speaking, is a large rivulet, divided the town from the Alamo, the former on the west side and the latter on the east. The Alamo village, a small suburb of San Antonio, was south of the fort, or Mission, as it was originally called, which bore the same name. The latter was an old fabric, built during the first settlement of the vicinity by the Spaniards, and having been originally designed as a place of safety for the colonists and their property in case of Indian hostility, with room sufficient for that purpose, it had neither the strength, compactness nor dominant points which ought to belong to a regular fortification. The front of the Alamo Chapel bears date of 1757, but the other works must have been built earlier. As the whole area contained between two and three acres, a thousand men would have barely sufficed to man its defenses; and before a regular siege train they would soon have crumbled. Yoakum, in his history of Texas, is not only astray in his details of the assault, but mistaken about the measurement of the place. Had the works covered no more ground than he represents, the result of the assault might have been different.
From recollection of the locality, as I viewed it in 1841, I could in 1860 trace the extent of the, outer walls, which had been demolished about thirteen years before the latter period. The dimensions here given are taken from actual measurement then made, and the accompanying diagram gives correct outlines, though without aiming at close exactitude of scale. The figure A in the diagram represents the chapel of the fort, 75 feet long, 62 wide and 22 1/2 high, with walls of solid masonry, four feet thick. It was originally of but one story, and if it then had any windows below, they were probably walled up when the place was prepared for defense. B locates a platform in the east end of the chapel; C designates its door, and D marks a wall, 50 feet long and about 12 high, connecting the chapel with the long barrack, E E. The latter was a stone house of two stories, 186 feet long, 18 wide and 18 high. FF is a low, one story stone barrack, 114 feet long and 17 wide, having in the centre a porte cochére, S, which passed through it under the roof. The walls of those two houses were about thirty inches thick, and they had flat terrace roofs of beams and plank, covered with a thick coat of cement. G H I K were flat-roofed stone-walled rooms built