the vast extent of the domain which they had
purchased. They had bought Louisiana "with the same extent that it is
now in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it,
and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into
between Spain and other States," but what its actual boundaries were
they did not know. Considerably disturbed that the treaty contained
no definition of boundaries, Livingston sought information from the
enigmatical Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?"
he asked. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we
received it." "But what did you mean to take?" urged Livingston somewhat
naively. "I do not know," was the answer. "Then you mean that we shall
construe it in our own way?" "I can give you no direction," said the
astute Frenchman. "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I
suppose you will make the most of it." And with these vague assurances
Livingston had to be satisfied.

The first impressions of Jefferson were not much more definite, for,
while he believed that the acquired territory more than doubled the area
of the United States, he could only describe it as including all the
waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi. He started at once, however,
to collect information about Louisiana. He prepared a list of queries
which he sent to reputable persons living in or near New Orleans.
The task was one in which he delighted: to accumulate and diffuse
information--a truly democratic mission gave him more real pleasure than
to reign in the Executive Mansion. His interest in the trans-Mississippi
country, indeed, was not of recent birth; he had nursed for years an
insatiable curiosity about the source and course of the Missouri; and in
this very year he had commissioned his secretary, Meriwether Lewis,
to explore the great river and its tributaries, to ascertain if they
afforded a direct and practicable water communication across the
continent.

The outcome of the President's questionnaire was a report submitted
to Congress in the fall of 1803, which contained much interesting
information and some entertaining misinformation. The statistical matter
we may put to one side, as contemporary readers doubtless did; certain
impressions are worth recording. New Orleans, the first and immediate
object of negotiations, contained, it would appear, only a small part of
the population of the province, which numbered some twenty or more