The Hero of the Brazos

1899

Near the city of Hempstead, in Texas, there lives a farm-hand who has proved himself a hero of peace, and whose name should be remembered by the people of his country with all the gratitude they willingly bestow upon the heroes of our armies.

One of the great rivers of Texas is the Brazos, a stream subject to vast floods, which often rise so suddenly that the people living near it have no time to escape the rush of the waters.

In early times a colony of Franciscan friars established a mission on a mound near the bank of the river. They built a church and a village, and taught the neighboring Indians. A hostile tribe, however, swept over the country, ravaging and burning, and there seemed to be no salvation for the friars and their converts behind the feeble defences of their mound. But of a sudden the waters of the river rose, and terrible floods swept away the savages and saved the little garrison.

Then the friars, so the story goes, saw plainly the working of the Lord, and they called the river which had enveloped them Los Brazos de Dios — The Arms of God.

But the Brazos is not always merciful. During the recent floods in Texas its waters played a mighty part in the destruction of life and property. One night, as the flood was beginning to overspread the farming lands, a young man named Fritz McGee was wakened by the distant roar. He rose, hurried out, and after some difficulty, secured a single frail rowboat and started alone on the work of rescue.

All through that terrible night be worked among the negro cabins scattered over the flooded bottoms, and before morning he had rescued seventy-five human beings, men, women and children, and had conveyed them to high and safe ground.

It is doubtful whether a single man ever before saved so many lives, one by one, in so short a time. Fritz McGee, farm-hand, rowing his fragile skiff through the darkness over the turbulent water, is a figure to stir the noblest feelings. — Youth's Companion.