ergetic spirit
of their leader, remonstrated with him and proposed to return to their
companions; but, disregarding them, he pressed on in his new
enterprise. In wading a small stream, one of the men was carried off by
an alligator, and a day or so after, another was bitten and killed by a
rattle-snake. Terror seized upon his men, and all their persuasions
proving fruitless, they determined to assassinate him and return. They
did so, only to find the colony dispersed and nowhere to be found.
After many hazardous adventures they reached the Arkansas River, and
descended it to its mouth, where they proposed preparing some means of
ascending the Mississippi, and thus return to Canada. Fortunately they
had been there but a few hours, when a small boat or two, which had
been dispatched from Canada to look after the colony so long expected,
arrived, and, learning the unfortunate issue of the enterprise, took on
board the party, and returned up the river. They reported the colony
destroyed, and it was not until many years after, that it was
discovered that those left on the sea-side had been found, and conveyed
to the Jesuit Mission, at San Antonio, where they had been cared for
and preserved by the pious and humane missionaries.

Subsequently a colony was located at Boloxy, on the shore of the lake,
and thence was transferred to New Orleans. Mobile, soon after, was made
the nucleus of another colony, and from these two points had proceeded
the pioneers of the different settlements along these rivers--the
Tombigbee and the Mississippi. It was to these settlements or posts, or
their neighborhoods, that these refugees from the Revolutionary war in
the colonies had retired. Natchez and St. Francisville, on the
Mississippi, and St. Stephen's and McIntosh's Bluff, on the Tombigbee,
were the most populous and important.

About these, and under the auspicious protection of the Spanish
Government, then dominant in Louisiana and Florida, commenced the
growth of the Anglo-Norman population, which is now the almost entire
population of the country. There proceeded from South Carolina, about
the time mentioned above, a colony of persons which located near
Natchez. They came down the Holston, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers,
on flat-boats; and after many escapes from the perils incident to the
streams they navigated, and the hostility of the savages who dwelt
along their shores, they reached this Canaan of their hopes. They had
intende