Jefferson and his Colleagues [22]
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 rural districts. On the river above the city were the plantations of the so-called Upper Coast, inhabited mostly by slaves whose Creole masters lived in town; then, as one journeyed upstream appeared the first and second German Coasts, where dwelt the descendants of those Germans who had been brought to the province by John Law's Mississippi Bubble, an industrious folk making their livelihood as purveyors to the city. Every Friday night they loaded their small craft with produce and held market next day on the river front at New Orleans, adding another touch to the picturesque groups which frequented the levees. Above the German Coasts were the first and second Acadian Coasts, populated by the numerous progeny of those unhappy refugees who were expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755. Acadian settlements were scattered also along the backwaters west of the great river: Bayou Lafourche was lined with farms which were already producing cotton; near Bayou Teche and Bayou Vermilion--the Attakapas country--were cattle ranges; and to the north was the richer grazing country known as Opelousas. Passing beyond the Iberville River, which was indeed no river at all but only an overflow of the Mississippi, the traveler up-stream saw on his right hand "the government of Baton Rouge" with its scattered settlements and mixed population of French, Spanish, and Anglo-Americans; and still farther on, the Spanish parish of West Feliciana, accounted a part of West Florida and described by President Jefferson as the garden of the cotton-growing region. Beyond this point the President's description of Louisiana became less confident, as reliable sources of information failed him. His credulity, however, led him to make one amazing statement, which provoked the ridicule of his political opponents, always ready to pounce upon the slips of this philosopher-president.