| 20 | barrels of biscuit, some sweet and some unsweetened | 1000 pounds |
| 10 | half barrels of beer | 2000 pounds |
| 50 | pounds of candles; | |
| 100 | pounds of coffee; | |
| 50 | pounds of chocolate; | |
| 6 | pounds of alcohol; | |
| 130 | pounds of Swiss cheese; | |
| 200 | pounds of beans; | |
| 180 | pounds of salad oil; | |
| 200 | pounds of smoked pork tongues; | |
| 150 | pounds of lentils; | |
| 370 | pounds of prune marmalade; | |
| 20 | pounds of mustard; | |
| 25 | pounds of onions; | |
| 20 | pounds of pepper; | |
| 110 | pounds of dried apples; | |
| 650 | pounds of rice; | |
| 100 | pounds of lard; | |
| 20 | pounds of sardines in small boxes; | |
| 100 | pounds of sausage; | |
| 100 | pounds of salt; | |
| 68 | pounds of white sugar; | |
| 137 | pounds of brown sugar; | |
| 120 | pounds of vermicelle and macaroni; | |
| 1000 | pounds of wine in two barrels; | |
| 360 | pounds of vinegar; | |
| 300 | pounds of whiskey; and | |
| 25 | pounds of powder and 100 pounds of bird shot. |
The total weight amounted to 7000 pounds and cost, including freight charges to Dallas, $1,000.[5]
The party embarked from New Orleans on May 3 with five women and one young man, Christopher, added to the party. Savardan had been advised that Considerant and his family would join his group at New Orleans, but they did not arrive. However, they joined them later at Galveston. Considerant brought with him his wife, a small child, M. Cesar Daly, and two other Frenchmen from the North American Phalanx named Maguet and Willemet. Galveston was reached May 5, and from here they sailed on a small steamboat, the L’Eclipse, up Buffalo Bayou to Houston. Here additional wagons and horses were purchased and teamsters were hired to take the provisions, some of which had been sent from New York, Cincinnati, and New Orleans, to La Réunion.
On May 18, the French wagon train, guided by a farmer who lived near Dallas and who had come to Houston to sell two bales of cotton, moved out through the woods toward Dallas. Some of the colonists were riding horses, two or three riding in carriages, and some were walking. A few of the men who had been drafted as teamsters were laboring with oxen, trying to get them to move along. Poorly built wagons and the absence of roads greatly hindered progress. They camped at night all together for protection against Indians, the women and children sleeping in the wagons and the men and boys on the ground. Eggs, milk, and poultry were purchased at farm houses as the caravan traversed the sparsely settled districts; some stealing was done, but, generally speaking, the colonists conducted themselves well on the entire trip.
All the way from Houston to La Réunion Savardan reports the colonists were expecting welcoming groups from La Réunion to come out and meet them. This, of course, never occurred because the people already at camp were finding it difficult to keep things going. They arrived at La Réunion June 16, 1855.[6]
Several other groups and individuals arrived at La Réunion during the following eighteen months. In fact, many arrived just in time to see the colony disband, leaving them to shift for themselves. Philip Goetsel, a Belgian, had a ranch of seventeen sections on Mountain Creek, twelve miles west of Dallas, on which he established a colony of Belgians. Several cabins were built on low lands which were subject to overflow; other improvements were made, but the colony never did become more than a dependency of La Réunion. Goetsel, however, planned to build a huge city upon the land, which he proposed to name Louvain in honor of his home city in Belgium. He had invested thirty thousand francs in La Réunion and when he noticed that it was going to pieces, he demanded his money with the intention of investing it in the “Louvain scheme.” The directors of La Réunion refused him his share on the grounds that he was building Louvain in opposition to La Réunion and that it would draw all the trade away from the community stores of the colony.[7] Still another party, time of arrival uncertain, was the one led by M. M. Raizant composed of nine people. These apparently came by New Orleans and Galveston, perhaps preceding Savardan’s party.
La Réunion was made up of high class, well educated and cultured people. A brief biography of the founders of the colony has already been given in the first chapter of this book, but a short sketch concerning several will here serve to give the reader a better comprehension of the colonists as a group.
Dr. Augustin Savardan had already helped to establish phalansteries in France before coming to Texas. He had also organized and supervised an orphans’ home in Paris which Napoleon III had helped to sustain. He was one of the first men Considerant and his colleagues called into conference in Brussels when they began the organization of the European-American Colonization Society, and they asked him to act as chairman in one of their first meetings. In his report of his practice as a physician at La Réunion, he stated that he treated 226 patients and served in many other capacities during his stay here.[8]
Julien Reverchon came from a distinguished family in France.
His father, J. Maximilien Reverchon, was born at Lyons in 1810, and died at Dallas in 1879; and his mother (born Mlle. Florine Pete) was the daughter of a distinguished Lyonnaise advocate. Julien’s grandfather, Jacques Reverchon (1746-1829), was a Jacobin member of the National Convention (1792-95), as well as the Council of Five Hundred and of the Council of Elders. This Jacques Reverchon the revolutionnaire is that same citizen-representative from Saone et Loire, Rhone-et-Ain, whose reports on the rapacity of the Maratists at Lyons have been quoted in Taine’s Les Origines de la France Contemporaine.[9]