THE UNITED STATES IN 1803, AFTER THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE.
NEW ORLEANS IN 1803
The people of that day did not realize the importance of their purchase. For the most part the territory was a wild region, uninhabited except for scattered Indian tribes, and almost unexplored. The place most alive was New Orleans, which would have interested you keenly had you been a pioneer boy or girl. New Orleans has been called a Franco-Spanish-American city, for it has belonged to all three nations in turn and been under French control twice. You remember that the French settled it. Let us imagine ourselves pioneers of 1803, and that we have just brought a cargo down the river.
House in New Orleans Where Louis Philippe Stopped in 1798.
We find New Orleans to be one of the chief seaports of America. We see shipping of all sorts about the town—barges and flatboats along the river bank, merchant vessels in the harbor, and farther down some war-ships.
There are buildings still standing which are unchanged parts of the earlier French town—for instance, the government house, the barracks, the hospital, and the convent of the Ursulines. We notice that the walls and fortifications, built partly by the French and partly by the Spaniards, are but a mere ring of grass-grown ruins about the city.
A Public Building in New Orleans Built in 1794.