The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 6, July 1902 - April, 1903 Page: 7

Loui.s Juchereau de Saint-Denis.

be the country watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, and
included between the English of Carolina on the east and New
Mexico on the west.' But Crozat did not concern himself about
territorial claims or boundary lines. He had interested himself in
the affairs of the Western World for very practical reasons: unham-
pered by competition, he hoped to reap large profits from the trade
of the Indians and from the mines which were still generally
believed to exist everywhere in the New World. His factors were
instructed to be diligent in their efforts to draw the trade of the
Indians to the Mississippi, and to search constantly for promising
mineral deposits. Lamothe Cadillac, who had been appointed gov-
ernor of Louisiana in 1710, did not reach his post on Mobile Bay
until 1713. He became at once the active agent of M. Crozat in
his commercial enterprise. A few days after his arrival he received
orders from the proprietor to approach the Spaniards with a view
to establishing trade relations between Louisiana and Mexico.2 In
pursuance of these instructions, Cadillac dispatched a vessel to
Vera Cruz to exchange merchandise for cattle and other necessa-
ries, and to secure, if possible, a free entry for French ships into
the ports of Mexico. But neither in the smaller nor in the larger
purpose was the envoy successful. The viceroy would suffer the
vessel to come no farther than the roadstead, where it was permit-
ted to take on only such supplies as were necessary for the return
voyage. Nor would he listen to any proposition to open the ports
of Mexico to French vessels, declaring instead that the ports of
New Spain were closed absolutely to all foreign commerce.3 Thus
all hope of building up a profitable trade with Mexico by sea had
to be abandoned. But a little later there came into the hands of
Governor Cadillac a letter, written by a Spanish priest, which set
1Journal Historique, 39. La Salle's discoveries and explorations offered
as a more definite western boundary the Guadalupe river, and in 1714 a
French writer makes "the river Madeline (Guadalupe), which is a short
river flowing into Saint Bernard bay, and which consequently is neither
the Rio Panuco nor the Rio del Norte," the western limit of the province
of Louisiana. See extract from Memoire de Lemaire, Margry, VI 184.
'The Journal Historique, 113, says this refusal was to gratify the Eng-
lish with whom the Spanish had made the Assiento Treaty, March 26,
1713.
sPenicaut, Margry, V 495.