They did so, only to find the colony dispersed and nowhere to be found.  After many hazardous adventures they reached the Arkansas River, and descended it to its mouth, where they proposed preparing some means of ascending the Mississippi, and thus return to Canada.  Fortunately they had been there but a few hours, when a small boat or two, which had been dispatched from Canada to look after the colony so long expected, arrived, and, learning the unfortunate issue of the enterprise, took on board the party, and returned up the river.  They reported the colony destroyed, and it was not until many years after, that it was discovered that those left on the sea-side had been found, and conveyed to the Jesuit Mission, at San Antonio, where they had been cared for and preserved by the pious and humane missionaries.

Subsequently a colony was located at Boloxy, on the shore of the lake, and thence was transferred to New Orleans.  Mobile, soon after, was made the nucleus of another colony, and from these two points had proceeded the pioneers of the different settlements along these rivers—­the Tombigbee and the Mississippi.  It was to these settlements or posts, or their neighborhoods, that these refugees from the Revolutionary war in the colonies had retired.  Natchez and St. Francisville, on the Mississippi, and St. Stephen’s and McIntosh’s Bluff, on the Tombigbee, were the most populous and important.

About these, and under the auspicious protection of the Spanish Government, then dominant in Louisiana and Florida, commenced the growth of the Anglo-Norman population, which is now the almost entire population of the country.  There proceeded from South Carolina, about the time mentioned above, a colony of persons which located near Natchez.  They came down the Holston, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers, on flat-boats; and after many escapes from the perils incident to the streams they navigated, and the hostility of the savages who dwelt along their shores, they reached this Canaan of their hopes.  They had intended to locate at New Madrid.  The country around was well suited for cultivation, being alluvial and rich, and the climate was all they could desire; but they found a population mongrel and vicious, unrestrained by law or morals, and learning through a negro belonging to the place of an intended attack upon their party, for the purpose of robbery, they hastily re-embarked what of their property and stock they had debarked.  Under pretense of dropping a few miles lower down the river for a more eligible site, they silently and secretly left in the night, and never attempted another stop until reaching the Walnut Hills, now Vicksburg.  A few of the party concluded to remain here, while the larger number went on down; some to the mouth of Cole’s Creek, some to Natchez, and others to the cliffs known by the name of one of the emigrants whose party concluded to settle there.