and settlements; factories and store-houses had been established in each; the attention of the colonists had been drawn from the unprofitable search for gold, to the importance of agriculture; the culture of rice, indigo and tobacco had been introduced, and figs and oranges were growing in luxuriant abundance; communication and commerce had been opened with the Indies and Canada; in short, the colony had been brought into a condition of self support.
On the reversion of Louisiana to the King, he began the chastisement of the Indians, who had been instigated to deeds of violence by the English and Spaniards. One powerful tribe, the Natches, was utterly annihilated, and the Chicasaws severely punished.
The territory claimed by the French under the name of Louisiana was immense. Beginning to the east, midway between Pensacola and Mobile, the boundary ran north to the head waters of the Ohio. Every rivulet whose waters ran to the Mississippi was claimed by the French. “Half a mile,” says Bancroft, “from the head of the southern branch of the Savannah River is a spring, which flows to the Mississippi; strangers who drank of it would say that they had tasted of French waters.” Beginning at the south-west on the Rio del Norte and ascending on a line of the ridge that divides it from the Red River, the boundary extended along this ridge to the Gulf of California. On the north-west, the boundary line between the Hudson Bay Company was not fixed. On the north-east it was bounded by Canada.
It must not be supposed that while the French were thus exploring, taking possession of, and settling so vast a country, that the Spaniards and English were wholly ignorant of, or indifferent to, their operations. Both nations had watched the French with a jealous eye and envied their success. The Spaniards had at one time destroyed a settlement at the Isle of Dauphine and frequently harassed the colonists. From the discovery of the continent, England had
