m to
its mouth.

The romantic achievement was successfully accomplished. The banners of
France were unfurled along the banks of the majestic river and upon the
shores of the Gulf of Mexico. This whole region which France claimed by
the right of discovery, was named in honor of the king of France,
Louisiana. Its limits were necessarily quite undefined. In 1684, a
French colony of two hundred and eighty persons was sent out to effect a
settlement on the Lower Mississippi. Passing by the mouth of the river
without discovering it, they landed in Texas, and took possession of the
country in the name of the king of France. Disaster followed disaster.
La Salle died, and the colonists were exterminated by the Indians. Not
long after this, all the country west of the Mississippi was ceded by
France to Spain, and again, some years after, was surrendered back again
by Spain to France. We have not space here to allude to the details of
these varied transactions. But this comprehensive record seems to be
essential to the full understanding of the narrative upon which we have
entered.

It was in the year 1763 that Louisiana was ceded, by France, to Spain.
In the year 1800, it was yielded back to France, under Napoleon, by a
secret article in the treaty of Sn. Ildefonso. It had now become a
matter of infinite moment to the United States that the great Republic
should have undisputed command of the Mississippi, from its source to
its mouth. President Jefferson instructed our Minister at Paris, Robert
Livingston, to negotiate with the French Government for the purchase of
Louisiana. France was then at war with England. The British fleet swept
triumphantly all the seas. Napoleon, conscious that he could not protect
Louisiana from British arms, consented to the sale. We are informed that
on the 10th of April, 1803, he summoned two of his ministers in council,
and said to them:

"I am fully sensible of the value of Louisiana; and it was my wish to
repair the error of the French diplomatists who abandoned it in 1763. I
have scarcely recovered it before I run the risk of losing it. But if I
am obliged to give it up it shall cost more to those who force me to
part with it, than to those to whom I yield it. The English have
despoiled France of all her Northern possessions in America, and now
they covet those of the South. I am determined that they shall not have
the Mississippi. Although Louisiana is but a trifle compared with their
vast p