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THE BOSTON REVIEW.

DECEMBER, 1806.

Librum tuum legi & quam diligentissime potui annotavi, quæ commutanda, quæ eximenda, arbitrarer. Nam ego dicere vero assuevi. Neque ulli patientius reprehenduntur, quam qui maxime laudari merentur.--PLINY.

ARTICLE 65.

part of which he seems better pleased, than with Louisiana. In the title-page we are informed that the work is an account of travels in 1802; yet in the first sentence of the first chapter the writer tells us he has dwelt two years and a half in the colony. The Frenchman considers Louisiana and WestFlorida as one colony, but he was never a surveyor of boundaries, and Divisa arboribus patriæ. politicians must look elsewhere New-York, Riley & Co. 12mo. for the demarkation of our sover

Travels in Louisiana and the Floridas in the year 1802, giving a correct picture of those countries. Translated from the French, with notes, c. by John Davis. Aspice et extremis domitum cultoribus orbem,

Eaosque domos Arabum, pictosque
Gelonos ;

pp. 181. 1806.

VIRG.

THE immense price, we have already paid for a part of the country, described in this book, and the value, attached to the rest both by its owners and by our government, renders every account of it interesting in a higher degree, than other travels. The knowledge of the author might have been acquired by a two-months' residence at New-Orleans; but there are few men of education and leisure, who are desirous of a pilgrimage into that region, so little known to its possessors, and we must, therefore, acquiesce many years in the relations of men, who enjoy few opportunities for inquiry, and exhibit little minuteness of investigation. The author was, as is conjectured by his translator, a planter of St. Domingo, driven by the blacks to seek a refuge on the continent, with any Vol. III. No. 12. 4K

eignty. We learn only, that on the west we are bounded by NewMexico, and vast countries unexplored.' The President of the United States, in a message to Congress, says, that Spain would confine our territory to a narrow strip of land on the west bank of the Mississippi; but, as we have long since sent a company across the continent, even to the Pacifick Ocean, it is presumable, that our government lays claim to all that tract, traversed by Capts. Lewis and Clarke. Yet it seems matter of very little concern in this quarter, whether our rights extend fifty or fifteen hundred leagues beyond the Mississippi. But the translator, in one of his notes, attempts to raise a doubt, where we had thought ourselves most secure.

It is a matter of mirth, what erroneous notions the world has relative to the cession of Louisiana.

to the United States. A thousand 'people imagine at this moment that New-Orleans belongs to us; whereas New Orleans still belongs to his Catholic Majesty the King of Spain; it is comprehended in the tract reserved by him.'

P.165.

But, however ignorant of the extent of our domain, we are willing to learn its value.

If we take into consideration the whole extent of the tract, comprehended in the boundaries that have been just exhibited, the colony, under that point of view, includes an immense territory. But appreciating things by their real value, and considering the country In another point of view, both with regard to the nature of its soil and other local circumstances, without including Upper Louisiana, which begins at the thirty-first degree of Jatitude, and extends to the north and the east, an immense territory, wild and uncultivated, with a few partial exceptions, I am disposed to believe that this part of the colony, composed of Lower Louisiana and West Florida, situated at the thirtieth and thirty-first degrees of north latitude, and at the sixty-eighth or sixty-ninth degree of east longitude, from the meridian of Ferrol, where the principal settlements of the colony are established; this immense tract, I insist, comprehending a space of four thousand leagues, affords only five hundred square leagues of land adapted to the pur poses of agriculture of these too, seventy-five are upon the banks of the Mississippi, a hundred and twenty-five in the interiour of the country, and three hundred in the tract bounded by the Atacapas and the Apelousas; from which the

inference is manifest, that only the eighth part of this vast country can be appropriated to the labours and residence of man, the remainder being covered with lakes, forests, and swamps, and dry and sandy deserts.' P. 4.

In the second chapter we learn,

The Mississippi, which divides the colony, and whose real name, in the language of the aborigines of the country, is Messachipi, which signifies the Father of Waters, is one of the most consid erable rivers in America. P.7.

Of the impediments to naviga tion, the rapidity of the current, the variation of the channel, and the bar at the mouth, we have all the information, we can desire.

The 3d chapter is chiefly occupied by a minute description of the city and island of New-Orleans. Was it ever thought, that, in the hands of Spaniards,that city would have been a difficult conquest? Thẻ President of the United States talked of the rashness of attacking a place, whose walls were covered with cannon. But the traveller contemptuously asks, Must I make mention of Fort St. Charles, and its pretended ramparts? It would provoke the risibility of an engineer.'

Such is New-Orleans at the present era. It deserves rather the name of a great straggling town, than of a city; though, even to merit that title, it would be required to be longer. In fact, the mind can, I think, scarcely image to itself a more disagreeable place on the face of the whole globe; it is disgusting in whatever point of view it be contemplated, both as a whole, separately, and the wild, brutish aspect of its suburbs. Yet it is the only town in the whole

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