156 Marcel Moraud
declared that the book had been written by a “Parisian
adventurer” and was unreliable.
In 1703, de La Salle reappears once more but less promi-
nently in the very popular book of a famous traveler, Baron
de la Hontan, New Foyage in Northern America, which had
five successive editions and was translated into English,
German and Spanish. It seems that after 1703 the interest
in the fateful Mississippi expedition went waning till 1713,
when it was suddenly revived by the publication of the most
reliable and the best document so far available, the Diary or
Journal of the last voyage performed by M. de La Salle, written
by de La Salle’s faithful lieutenant and companion, Joutel.
Once again in the middle of the century the story of de La
Salle was related by the Jesuit Charlevoix in his Historical
Journal of a voyage made by order of the King to North America,
which was published in 1744.
The name of de La Salle however was not forgotten any
more than his great dream. In 1698, the two brothers Iber-
ville and Bienville set sail for the Gulf of Mexico with two
frigates and 200 settlers. They reached this continent on
January, 1699, and a new chapter began in the History of the
United States, or rather the closed book was opened again
and at the very page that de La Salle had left unfinished.
The foundation of New Orleans and the development of
Louisiana are but the resumption and continuation of the
attempted colonization of Texas in 1685.
Then events moved rapidly; in 1762, by a secret treaty
between the court of Versailles and that of Madrid, Louisi-
ana was ceded to Spain, in spite of the vigorous protests of
its inhabitants, some of whom went so far as to try to estab-
lish an independent Republic of Louisiana. In 1800, it was
retroceded by Spain to France and finally sold by Napoleon
to the United States in 1803.