ining the Americans, put his men through a series of parade
movements near the fort. The two officers looked on from the walls,
Devilie in his showy Spanish uniform and Rogers gay with his gold-laced
hat and silver-hilted sword.

These performances at an end, Colonel Rogers told his host the purpose
of his expedition, and was informed by him that the war-material which
he was seeking was no longer at New Orleans, but had been removed to a
fort farther up the river, near the locality where the city of St. Louis
now stands. If the colonel had been advised of this sooner he might have
saved himself a long journey. But there was the possibility that the
officer at the St. Louis fort would refuse to surrender the ammunition
without orders from his superiors. Besides this, he had been directed to
go to New Orleans. So, on the whole, he thought it best to obey orders
strictly, and to obtain from the Spanish governor an order to the
commandant of the fort to deliver the goods. There was one difficulty in
the way. The English had a hold on the river at a place called Natchez,
where, as Captain Devilie told the colonel, they had built a fort. They
might fire on him in passing and sink his boats, or force him to land
and hold him prisoner. To escape this peril Colonel Rogers left the bulk
of his men at the Spanish fort, taking only a single canoe and a
half-dozen men with him. It was his purpose to try and slip past the
Natchez fort in the night, and this was successfully done, the canoe
gliding past unseen and conveying the small party safely to New Orleans.

Our readers no doubt remember how, a century before this time, the
Chevalier La Salle floated down the great river and claimed all the
country surrounding it for the king of France. Later on French settlers
came there, and in 1718 they laid out the town of New Orleans, which
soon became the capital of the province. The settlements here did not
grow very fast, and it does not seem that France valued them highly, for
in 1763, after the British had taken Canada from the French, all the
land west of the Mississippi River was given up by France to Spain. This
was to pay that country for the loss of Florida, which was given over to
England. That is how the Spaniards came to own New Orleans, and to have
forts along the river where French forts had once been.

Colonel Rogers found the Spanish governor at New Orleans as obliging as
Captain Devilie had been. He got an order for the a