Barbé-Marbois, Minister of the Treasury, called. Marbois astonished Livingston by declaring that one hundred millions of francs and the payment of the debts due American citizens was the price of Louisiana. This would bring the cost to one hundred and twenty-five millions, for at twentyfive millions of francs Livingston estimated the debts. He pronounced the price exorbitant; Marbois admitted that it was, and asked to take back to St. Cloud an offer of eighty millions of francs, including twenty millions for the debts. Some higgling now took place; but on these terms the purchase was effected by the three instruments dated April thirtieth, 1803.

[These were, a treaty of cession, an instrument arranging the mode of payment, and one treating of the debts, their character, and the method of their settlement.]

Jefferson was greatly puzzled when these three documents reached his hand. He had offered to buy an island for a dock-yard and a place of deposit; he was offered a magnificent domain. He had been authorized to expend two millions of dollars; the sum demanded was fifteen. As a strict constructionist he could not, and for a while he did not, consider the purchase of foreign territory as a constitutional act. But when he thought of the evils that would follow if Louisiana remained with France, and of the blessings that would follow if Louisiana came to the United States, his common sense got the better of his narrow political scruples, and he soon found a way of escape. He would accept the treaty, summon Congress, urge the House and Senate to perfect the purchase, and trust to the Constitution being amended so as to make the purchase legal.

[A sharp debate in Congress ensued, the old Federal party strongly opposing the consummation of the purchase. The enormous increase

the purchase would make in the national debt became a favorite theme, and every effort was made by writers and printers to show the people what a stupendous sum fifteen millions of dollars was.]

Fifteen millions of dollars! they would exclaim. The sale of a wilderness has not usually commanded a price so high. Ferdinand Gorges received but twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling for the province of Maine. William Penn gave for the wilderness that now bears his name but a trifle over five thousand pounds. Fifteen millions of dollars! A breath will suffice to pronounce the words. A few strokes of the pen will express the sum on paper. But not one man in a thousand has any conception of the magnitude of the amount. Weigh it, and there will be four hundred and thirty-three tons of solid silver. Load it into wagons, and there will be eight hundred and sixtysix of them. Place the wagons in a line, giving two rods to each, and they will cover a distance of five and onethird miles. Hire a laborer to shovel it into the carts, and, though he load sixteen each day, he will not finish the work in two months. Stack it up dollar on dollar, and, supposing nine to make an inch, the pile will be more than three miles high. . . . All the gold and all the silver coin in the United States would, if collected, fall vastly short of such a sum. We must, therefore, create a stock, and for fifteen years to come pay two thousand four hundred and sixty-five dollars interest each day. Invest the principal as a school fund, and the interest will support, forever, eighteen hundred free schools, allowing fifty scholars and five hundred dollars to each school. For whose benefit is the purchase made? The South and West. Will they pay a share of the debt? No, for the tax on whiskey has been removed.

The mass

Statistics, most happily, were of no avail. of the people pronounced the purchase a bargain. The

Senate, on October nineteenth, ratified the treaty and conventions; the ratification of Napoleon was already in the hands of the French charge, and on October twenty-first Jefferson informed Congress that ratifications had that day been exchanged. On November tenth the act creating the eleven millions two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of stock called for by the first convention was passed. On December twentieth, 1803, Louisiana was peaceably taken possession of by the United States.

The province of Louisiana, as the region came to be called, was to the Americans of that day an unknown land. Not a boundary was defined. Not a scrap of trustworthy information concerning the region was to be obtained. Meagre accounts of what travellers had seen on the Missouri, of what hunters and trappers knew of the upper Mississippi, of what the Indians said were the features of the great plains that stretched away towards the setting sun, had indeed reached the officials, and out of these was constructed the most remarkable document any President has ever transmitted to Congress. It told of a tribe of Indians of gigantic stature; of tall bluffs faced with stone and carved by the hand of Nature into what seemed a multitude of antique towers; of land so fertile as to yield the necessaries of life almost spontaneously; of an immense prairie covered with buffalo, and producing nothing but grass because the soil was far too rich for the growth of trees; and how, a thousand miles up the Missouri, was a vast mountain of salt! The length was one hundred and eighty miles; the breadth was forty-five; not a tree, not so much as a shrub, was on it; but, all glittering white, it rose from the earth a solid mountain of rock salt, with streams of saline water flowing from the fissures and cavities at its base! The story, the account admitted, might well seem incredible; but, unhappily for

the doubters, bushels of the salt had been shown by traders to the people at St. Louis and Marietta. .

The vexed question of the existence of the salt mountain was soon to be put at rest. Many months before, while the country was excited over the closing of the Mississippi, Jefferson urged Congress to send a party of explorers up the Missouri to its source, and thence overland to the Pacific Ocean. The idea was a happy one, was approved, an appropriation made, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark chosen to carry out the plan. Jefferson drew their instructions, and on May fourteenth, 1804, the party entered the Missouri. In time they crossed the mountains, reached the Pacific, and wandered over that fine region which came afterwards to be known as Oregon.

[In 1792 the mouth of the Columbia River had been discovered by Robert Gray, a merchant-captain trading between Boston and China by way of Cape Horn, and the first American to carry the flag of the United States around the world.

With the purchase of Louisiana is connected an important incident in the life of the celebrated Aaron Burr, which may be mentioned here. This personage, after serving a term as Vice-President of the United States, killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel growing out of a political quarrel. Burr next, having lost his property and having incensed the people against him, made his way to the West, and while there organized what was supposed to be a scheme for making war on the Spanish territories adjoining the newly-gained district of Louisiana. It is said that he intended to make himself monarch of this region, and also that he designed separating the Western Territories from the United States. His suspicious movements alarmed the government, and a proclamation was issued, warning the Western people against his illegal enterprises, and ordering the arrest of Burr and his followers. He was eventually arrested in Mississippi Territory, and sent to Richmond, where he was tried for treason, in a case that excited wide-spread attention. No overt act was proved against him, and he was acquitted. Upon his acquittal he went to Europe, where he lived for some time in extreme poverty. Returning to America, he practised law in an obscure manner for many years, and died in 1836.]

STEPHEN DECATUR AND THE FRIGATE PHILADELPHIA.

J. FENIMORE COOPER.

[The close of the Revolutionary War, although it secured the recognition of the United States as a sovereign and independent nation, by no means removed all the difficulties in its path to empire. From the very first, sources of complaint existed between the two lately warring countries. Great Britain was accused of carrying away negroes at the close of the war, of illegal seizures of American property, and of retaining military posts in the West on what was now territory of the United States. The United States was charged with withholding the estates of loyalists, and preventing British subjects from recovering debts contracted before the war. It was feared that another war might arise from these disputes, particularly as the Indian outbreaks in the West were known to have been encouraged by British emissaries, while the defeated savages fled to British forts for protection. These difficulties were fortunately settled by a treaty made in 1795.

But new sources of trouble quickly arose. The commerce of America was now increasing with remarkable rapidity. For the protection of this growing commerce the country possessed a very inefficient navy, and it was exposed to perils which quickly brought the country into danger of war with France, and eventually resulted in two wars, one with Tripoli and one with England. The outcome of the French Revolution had now brought all Europe under arms, and England had begun that vast struggle against the power and genius of Napoleon which was destined to become the most remarkable event of modern warfare. At the outbreak of the war the Republican party favored the French, but the administration was in favor of England. Angered at this, and at the treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain, the French Directory adopted measures highly injurious to American commerce. Envoys were sent to France, whom the Directory refused to receive, while an unofficial demand was made for a large sum of money as a preliminary to negotiations. This was refused, and two of the envoys, who were Federalists, were soon afterwards ordered to leave France.

As war now appeared inevitable, the people of the United States