6, 1793.] Pressure of the Westerners on the Spanish Domain.
Of course the action of the American Government in procuring the recall of Genet and putting a stop to Clark's operations lightened for a moment the pressure of the backwoodsmen upon the Spanish dominions; but it was only for a moment.

The Westerners were bent on seizing the Spanish territory; and they were certain to persist in their efforts until they were either successful or were definitely beaten in actual war.

The acts of aggression were sure to recur; it was only the form that varied.

When the chance of armed conquest under the banner of the French Republic vanished, there was an immediate revival of plans for getting possession of some part of the Spanish domain through the instrumentality of the great land companies.
The Land Companies.
These land companies possessed on paper a weight which they did not have in actual history.

They occasionally enriched, and more often impoverished, the individual speculators; but in the actual peopling of the waste lands they counted for little in comparison with the steady stream of pioneer farmers who poured in, each to hold and till the ground he in fact occupied.