In such a place ships might at least be preserved from worms, in all likelihood, by paying their bottoms with aloes, or mixing it with their other stuff. That has been found to prevent the biting of these worms; and might be had in plenty on the spot. Many kinds of aloes would grow on the barren sandy lands about Pensacola, and in Florida, which is the proper soil for them; and would be a good improvement for those lands, which will hardly bear any thing else to advantage, whatever use is made of it.
Having room in this place, we may fill it up with an answer to a common objection against Louisiana; which is, that this country is never likely to turn to any account, because the French have made so little of it.
But that objection, however common, will appear to proceed only from the ignorance of those who make it. No country can produce any thing without labourers; which, it is certain, the French have never had in Louisiana, in any numbers at least, sufficient to make it turn to any greater account than it has hitherto done. The reason of this appears not to be owing to the country, but to their proceedings and misconduct in it. Out of the many thousand people who were contracted for by the grantees, to be sent to Louisiana in 1719, there were but eight hundred sent, we see; and of these the greatest part were ruined by their idle schemes, which made them and others abandon the country entirely. The few again who remained in it were cut off by an Indian massacre in 1729, which broke up the only promising settlements they had in the country, those of the Natchez, and Yasous, which were never afterwards reinstated. Instead of encouraging the colony in such misfortunes, the minister, Cardinal Fleuri, either from a spirit of oeconomy, or because it might be contrary to some other of his views, withdrew his protection from it, gave up the public plantations, and must thereby, no doubt, have very much discouraged others. By these means they have had few or no people in Louisiana, but such as were condemned to be sent to it for their crimes, women of ill fame, deserted soldiers, insolvent debtors, and galley-slaves, forçats, as they call them; "who, looking on the country only as a place of exile, were disheartened at every thing in it; and had no regard for the progress of a colony, of which they were only members by compulsion, and neither knew nor considered its advantages to the state. It is from such people that many have their accounts of this country; and throw the blame of all miscarriages in it upon the country, when they are only owing to the incapacity and negligence of those who were instructed to settle it."[15]
Footnotes:
[1] Charlevoix Hist. N. France, Tom. III. p. 444.
[3] Dumont, I. 15.
[4] Description of Carolina, p. 37
[5] Memoires, I. 16.