1/43 Louisiana, or the Mississippi Basin.%--The landing of La Salle on the coast of Texas, and the building of Fort St.Louis of Texas, gave the French a claim to the coast as far southward as a point halfway between the fort and the nearest Spanish settlement, in Mexico. At that point was the Rio Grande, a good natural boundary. On the French maps, therefore, Louisiana extended from the Rocky Mountains and the Rio Grande on the west, to the Alleghany Mountains on the east, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to New France on the north. This confined the English colonies to a narrow strip between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. |