This collection of letters, written by a young German colonist in Dr. 
John Charles Beales's ill-fated colony Dolores, provides an almost 
daily account of the colonists' journey to the Rio Grande from New 
York City harbor and their labors to establish a settlement there 
on Las Moras Creek. Ludecus recounts in his letters the colonists' 
efforts to provide protection from Indian attacks by constructing 
around the settlement a high, thorny barrier of mesquite branches 
and cactus cleared from the land they wished to plant. He narrates 
how the carpenters among the colonists fashioned a cannon of oak 
which they successfully fired once to warn off hostile Indians in the 
area.

    His record of life in the colony emphasizes the deprivation suffered 
by the colonists. From the day of their arrival at the colony site to the 
day most of the colonists abandoned the settlement in desperation, 
Ludecus's letters are filled with descriptions of the colonists' 
hardships and frustration as they tried to cope with an almost total 
lack of stone and timber in the vicinity of Dolores for constructing 
houses, outbuildings, and fencing around their young crops.

    Eduard Ludecus's letters are also a source of valuable information 
about life and culture in pre-revolutionary Texas. His letters are one 
of just a handful of eyewitness reports about the early Texas frontier. 
His observations are those of a young, well-educated German 
merchant who had traveled from the urbane environment of Weimar, 
the center of art and literature in Germany in the early nineteenth 
century, to the raw, hostile environment of Texas. As a result, many 
of his remarks seem to have been recorded in wide-eyed awe of his 
new environment.

    Ludecus's letters are written with a vivid directness often lacking 
in the recollections of such well-known narrators as John C. Duval, 
Noah Smithwick, and John Holland Jenkins. Ludecus's narrative 
style is so vivid, so lively that the reader often feels as if he were 
sharing the narrator's experiences and observations not as a reader, 
but as a companion.

_________________________________________________________

LOUIS E. BRISTER, Professor Emeritus of German, Department of 
Modern Languages, Texas State University, is the author of several 
journal articles and books, including In Mexican Prisons: The 
Journal of Eduard Harkort, 1832–1834. He lives in San Marcos, 
Texas.


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