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In 1684, while on a voyage from France to plant a colony on the Mississippi, he missed the mouth and brought up on the coast of Texas; and, landing on the sands of Matagorda Bay, the colonists built another Fort St. Louis. But death rapidly reduced their numbers, and, in their distress, they parted. Some remained at the fort and were killed by the Indians.
La Salle, in his letter to Seignelay of 4 March, says, that it is in latitude twenty-eight degrees and eighteen or twenty minutes. This answers to the entrance of Matagorda Bay. In the Archives de la Marine is preserved a map made by an engineer of the expedition, inscribed Minuty del, and entitled Entree du lac ou on a laisse le Sieur de la Salle.
This road leaves the Gulf coast at Powder-horn, on Matagorda Bay, which point is difficult of access by land from the north, but may be reached by steamers from New Orleans five times a week.
Then he was seized with a dangerous fever; and while the vessels waited at San Domingo for him to be well enough to resume the voyage, his villains roamed the island and rioted in debauchery. Its destination being the mouth of the Mississippi, what was the expedition doing at Matagorda Bay, in Texas? This was the result of another folly.
The name of Espiritu Santo was, as before mentioned, given by the Spaniards to St. Louis or Matagorda Bay, as well as to two other bays of the Gulf of Mexico. Carta en que se da noticia de un viaje hecho a la Bahia de Espiritu Santo y de la poblacion que tenian ahi Jos Franceses. Coleccion de Varios Documentos para la Historia de la Florida, 25.
After a delay at Santo Domingo, which lasted two years, the expedition, missing the mouth of the Mississippi, entered the Bay of Matagorda, where they were shipwrecked.
La Salle leads an Expedition to seize the Mouth of the Mississippi. A Series of Mishaps. Landing at Matagorda Bay. Fort St. Louis of Texas. Seeking the Mississippi, La Salle explores the Interior of Texas. Mounted Comanches. La Salle starts out to go to Canada for Relief. Interesting Experiences. La Salle assassinated. Tonty's Heroic Efforts to rescue him and his Party.
Accordingly, he sent for the rest of the Thirteenth Corps, and by the end of December had taken possession of the fringe of the coast as far east and north as Matagorda Bay. So far he had met with little opposition, the Confederate force in this part of Texas being small. The Brazos and Galveston were still to be gained, and here, if anywhere in Texas, a vigorous resistance was to be counted on.
La Salle was assassinated by some of his own men, near a branch of the Trinity river in Texas. He had sailed from France in 1684 for the purpose of founding a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, and had landed at Matagorda Bay, mistaking it for an outlet of the Mississippi. He was about to sail for Canada in order to get supplies for his colony, when he met the fate here described.
By a strange irony of Fate, the expedition of 1684 passed the mouth of the Mississippi, and La Salle made the first French settlement on the Gulf somewhere in the vicinity of Matagorda Bay, in the present State of Texas. Misery was the lot of the little colony from the very first moment it landed on that lonely shore.
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