Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/166

 106 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST IMISSOURI the eompanj' of dragoons, George N. Reagan was lieutenant, and John Baptiste Barsaloiix was ensign. Cuming, who visited New Madrid in 1808 gives the following description of the town at that time : ' ' New Madrid contains about a hundred houses scattered on a fine plain two miles square on which, however, the river has so encroached during the twenty-two years since it was first settled, that the bank is now half a mile behind its old bounds and the inhabitants have had to move rapidly back. They are a mixture of French Creoles from Illinois. United States Americans and Germans. They have plenty of cattle biit seem in other respects to be very poor. There is some trade with the Indian hunters of furs and peltry but of little consequence. Dry goods and groceries are enormously high and the inhabitants charge travelers immense prices for any common necessaries such as milk, butter, fowls, eggs. etc. There is a militia the officers of which wear cockades as a mark of distinctiion although the rest of their dress should be only a dirty ragged shirt and trousers. There is a church going to decay and no preacher and there are coiirts of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions from which an appeal lies to the Supreme Court at St. Louis, the capital of the territory of Up- per Louisiana, which is two hundred and forty miles to the northward by wagon road which passes through Ste. Genevieve which is 180 miles distant. On account of this distance from the capital New Madrid has obtained a right to have all trials for felony held and ad- judged here without appeal. The inhabitants regret much the change of government from Spanish to American but this I am not sur- prised at as it is the nature of mankind to never be satisfied. ' ' * AUiot who visited Louisiana in 1803 says: "A hundred leagues farther up the river the traveler comes to that charming river known by the name of Belle Riviere (the Ohio) which, like so many others, pays its tribute of respect to the mortal Mississippi by giving its limpid waters to it ; at that place is built the fort 1' Ance a la Graice where a command- ant and 150 soldiers are stationed, there is a hamlet there inhabited by three score per- sons. That place is so much more remarkable in as much as its inhabitants were the first along the river to engage in the cultivation of wlieat. Excellent meadows are seen there on which cows and steers feed, its inhabitants rear many hogs and fowls, the forests are full of all sorts of game and fallow-deer, "t Nuttall who visited New Madrid in 1820 has this account of the town: "We arrived before noon at New Madrid, we found both sides of the river lined with logs, some sta- tionary and others in motion and we nai"- rowly avoided several of considerable mag- nitude. New Madrid is an insignificant French hamlet containing little more than about twenty log houses and stores miserably supplied, the goods of which are retailed at exorbitant prices, for example, 18 cents per pound for lead which costs 7 cents at Her- culaneum, salt .$5.00 per bushel, sugar 3114' cents per pound, whiskey $1.25 per gallon, apples 25 cents per dozen, corn 50 cents per bushel, fresh butter 371/2 cents per pound and eggs the same price per dozen, pork $6.00 per hundred, beef $5.00. Still the labor of the land seems to be of a good quality but t Robertson, "Louisians, " Vol. I, p. 133.
 * Cuming's "Tour to the West." p. 2S1.