on from arriving in time;
and Burr's little fleet floated peacefully by down stream.

The scene now shifts to the lower Mississippi, and the heavy villain
of the melodrama appears on the stage in the uniform of a United States
military officer--General James Wilkinson. He had been under orders
since May 6, 1806, to repair to the Territory of Orleans with as little
delay as possible and to repel any invasion east of the River Sabine;
but it was now September and he had only just reached Natchitoches,
where the American volunteers and militiamen from Louisiana and
Mississippi were concentrating. Much water had flowed under the bridge
since Aaron Burr visited New Orleans.

After President Jefferson's bellicose message of the previous December,
war with Spain seemed inevitable. And when Spanish troops crossed
the Sabine in July and took up their post only seventeen miles
from Natchitoches, Western Americans awaited only the word to begin
hostilities. The Orleans Gazette declared that the time to repel Spanish
aggression had come. The enemy must be driven beyond the Sabine. "The
route from Natchitoches to Mexico is clear, plain, and open." The
occasion was at hand "for conferring on our oppressed Spanish brethren
in Mexico those inestimable blessings of freedom which we ourselves
enjoy." "Gallant Louisianians! Now is the time to distinguish yourselves
.... Should the generous efforts of our Government to establish a free,
independent Republican Empire in Mexico be successful, how fortunate,
how enviable would be the situation in New Orleans!" The editor who
sounded this clarion call was a coadjutor of Burr. On the flood tide
of a popular war against Spain, they proposed to float their own
expedition. Much depended on General Wilkinson; but he had already
written privately of subverting the Spanish Government in Mexico, and
carrying "our conquests to California and the Isthmus of Darien."

With much swagger and braggadocio, Wilkinson advanced to the center of
the stage. He would drive the Spaniards over the Sabine, though they
outnumbered him three to one. "I believe, my friend," he wrote, "I shall
be obliged to fight and to flog them." Magnificent stage thunder. But
to Wilkinson's chagrin the Spaniards withdrew of their own accord. Not
a Spaniard remained to contest his advance to the border. Yet, oddly
enough, he remained idle in camp. Why?

Some two weeks later, an emissary appeared at Natchitoches with a letter
from B