I went to the courts, and, after
following and abandoning several false trails through two days' search,
found that the books of record containing the object of my quest had been
lost, having unaccountably disappeared in--if I remember aright--1870.

There was one chance left: it was to find the original papers. I employed
an intelligent gentleman at so much a day to search till he should find
them. In the dusty garret of one of the court buildings--the old Spanish
Cabildo, that faces Jackson Square--he rummaged for ten days, finding now
one desired document and now another, until he had gathered all but one.
Several he drew out of a great heap of papers lying in the middle of the
floor, as if it were a pile of rubbish; but this one he never found. Yet I
was content. Through the perseverance of this gentleman and the
intervention of a friend in the legal profession, and by the courtesy of
the court, I held in my hand the whole forgotten story of the poor lost
and found Salome Mueller. How through the courtesy of some of the
reportorial staff of the "New Orleans Picayune" I found and conversed with
three of Salome's still surviving relatives and friends, I shall not stop
to tell.

While I was still in search of these things, the editor of the "New
Orleans Times-Democrat" handed me a thick manuscript, asking me to examine
and pronounce upon its merits. It was written wholly in French, in a
small, cramped, feminine hand. I replied, when I could, that it seemed to
me unfit for the purposes of transient newspaper publication, yet if he
declined it I should probably buy it myself. He replied that he had
already examined it and decided to decline it, and it was only to know
whether I, not he, could use it that I had been asked to read it.

I took it to an attorney, and requested him, under certain strict
conditions, to obtain it for me with all its rights.

"What is it?"

"It is the minute account, written by one of the travelers, a pretty
little Creole maiden of seventeen, of an adventurous journey made, in
1795, from New Orleans through the wilds of Louisiana, taking six weeks to
complete a tour that could now be made in less than two days."

But this is written by some one else; see, it says

[Handwriting: Voyage de ma grand'mere]

"Yes," I rejoined, "it purports to be a copy. We must have the little
grandmother's original manuscript, written in 1822; that or nothing."

So a correspondence sprang up with a gentle a