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Historic Louisiana - New Orleans - French Influence
Title: Über Louisiana Dessen Entdeckung, Lage, Beschaffenheit
und Gränzen. [Louisiana: Discovery, Circumstances, Constitution and Boundaries.]
Weimar: Industrie-Comptoirs, 1809. 8vo. 40 pages, plus a portrait engraving.
Text is in German. A scarce primary resource.
This is a complete monthly issue, containing the above mentioned account.
Attractively bound booklet style in recent blue paper covers with label.
This issue contains a detailed analysis of Louisiana in early colonial
times, featuring French explorations, exploits and settlements.
The author begins with a chronicle of discovery including French explorer
Robert Cavelier de La Salle who named the region
'Louisiana' in honor of King Louis XIV, continuing with
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville who founded the first settlement, so forth.
Drawn from several early works by French explorers such as
Francois Marie Perrin Du Lac, André Michaux, Pierre-Louis Berquin Duvallon, Louis Narcisse Baudry Des Lozières, and Claude C. Robin, whose portrait engraving
is seen here, and who had in 1807 published an account of his voyage to Louisiana,
which had just been translated into German with the title, "Reisen nach dem
Innern von Louisiana, dem westlichen Florida, und auf die Inseln Martinique
und St. Domingo. In den Jahren 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805 und 1806."
Claude C. Robin (b. 1750) and his son traveled in Louisiana and the Caribbean,
1802-1806. He recorded their observations of the rebellion and the subsequent
settlement of the refugees in Louisiana in 'Voyages dans l'intérieur de la Louisiane,
de la Floride occidentale, et dans les isles de la Martinique et de Saint-Domingue,'
published in Paris by F. Buisson, 1807.
These are the original pages printed in 1809, and NOT a reprint.
This narrative is from a rare multi-volume geographical and scientific journal titled "Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden", which issued fifty volumes from 1798-1816
and which encompassed critical contemporary topics of geography and astronomy.
Adam Christian Gaspari and Franz Xaver von Zach were editors of this important
scientific journal.
Francois Marie Perrin Du Lac (1766-1824), was a French administrator
who entered the colonial administration in 1789, and was attached to the treasury department of Santo Domingo, and took part in the rebellion of Cape Francais.
In 1791 he accompanied Palissot de Beauvais to the United States to demand
the help of congress against the negro insurgents, and remained in the country
after the return of Palissot to Santo Domingo. The war between England and France preventing his immediate return to his country, he travelled through the
United States and explored the southern and western states, visiting Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
He published "Voyage dans les deux Louisianes, et chez les nations sauvages
du Missouri, par les Etats-Unis, l'Ohio, et les provinces qui le bordent,
en 1801, 1802, et 1803, avec un apergu des moeurs, des usages, du caractere
et des coutumes religieuses et civiles des peuples de ces diverses controes"
in 1805.
André Michaux (1746-1802), was a French botanist and explorer.
He was appointed by Louis XVI as royal botanist and sent to the
United States in 1785 to investigate plants that could be of value in France.
He was recalled from the westward expedition to which he had been invited,
by Jefferson, and ordered to be expelled from the country, but in fact never
left America until 1797. On his return to France in 1797 he was shipwrecked
and lost most of his botanical collections. In 1800 he sailed with Nicolas Baudin's expedition to Australia, but left the ship in Mauritius after quarreling with
the captain. He then went to Madagascar to investigate the flora of that island,
and died there of a tropical fever. His work as a botanist was chiefly done in
the field, and he added largely to what was previously known of the botany
of the East and of America.
Pierre-Louis Berquin-Duvallon was born in St. Dominque and, at the time of the revolution, left the island for Baltimore. In 1800 he came to New Orleans, traveled through Louisiana, and purchased a plantation on the Tchoupitoulas Coast where he wrote the travel account for which he is remembered. His account of his travels in Louisiana and the Floridas was first published in French in 1803, translated into German in 1804.
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VOYAGER PRESS BOOKS 1.888.656.2006
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