160 Marcel Moraud
in the light of available documents, how we stand today,
what we know more or less accurately, what remains uncer-
tain or even altogether unknown for the present.
I will not attempt to relate the life of the French settlers
at Camp or Fort Saint Louis, although it would make a
wonderful tale. It can be read in the Diaries of Abbe Cave-
lier, Father Douay, Joutel, and in many novels and stories
on the subject, some of which are in fact extremely well
written and most entertaining.
One of the problems which have been most discussed is
the reason why de La Salle and his companions failed to
reach the mouth of the Mississippi. Of course everyone
realizes that, had they succeeded, the expedition might have
taken an altogether different turn. Some have attributed
this failure to the ignorance, the stubbornness of de La Salle;
others to a lack of cooperation from Beaujeu, to his dis-
loyalty. Some historians have even gone so far as to charge
him with downright treachery. With the documents now
available it seems that a different and more plausible expla-
nation might be given. The Spaniards having heard in Sep-
tember, 1685, of the French expedition, through a servant
of de La Salle who had deserted at Santo Domingo, and was
later captured at Vera Cruz, sent four different expeditions
by sea to discover the French settlement. They used their
best pilots, some of whom were very familiar with the Gulf
of Mexico. Every one of them looked for the mouth of the
Mississippi or as they called it the Rio del Espiritu Santo.
Every one went by and failed to identify it. On the other
hand we find, in studying the expedition of the brothers
Bienville and Iberville, that when they sailed for the Gulf
of Mexico in 1798, after examining all the maps and docu-
ments available, they declared that they would recognize
the mouth of the river “by its muddy waters,” a detail