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These
confidential whispers of course soon became public; and were confirmed by
travelers fresh from the Mississippi, and doubtless bribed, who had seen
the mines in question, and declared them superior in richness to those of
Mexico and Peru. Nay, more, ocular proof was furnished to public credulity,
in ingots of gold conveyed to the mint, as if just brought from the mines
of Louisiana.
Extraordinary measures were adopted to force a colonization. An edict was
issued to collect and transport settlers to the Mississippi. The police
lent its aid. The streets and prisons of Paris, and of the provincial
cities, were swept of mendicants and vagabonds of all kinds, who were
conveyed to Havre de Grace. About six thousand were crowded into ships,
where no precautions had been taken for their health or accommodation.
Instruments of all kinds proper for the working of mines were
ostentatiously paraded in public, and put on board the vessels; and the
whole set sail for this fabled El Dorado, which was to prove the grave of
the greater part of its wretched colonists.


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