Excerpt from The Mississippi and Its Forty-Four Navigable Tributaries: A Descriptive, Commercial, and Statistical Review, Illustrated With Three Diagrams

In the early days of European discoveries and rivalries in the Mississippi Valley its comprehensive river system played a prominent part on the stage of public affairs. The discovery of the river, in 1541, by De Soto and his Spanish troops, was about a century later followed by explorations by the French under the lead of Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, and others, who entered the valley from the north. La Salle, during the years1679- 83, explored the river throughout its whole length, took possession of the great valley in the name of France, and called it Louisiana in honor of his King, Louis XIV. Then resulted grand schemes for developing the resources of the valley, which a French writer characterized as the regions watered by the Mississippi, immense unknown virgin solitudes which the imagination filled with riches. One Crozat, in 1712, secured from the King a charter giving him almost imperial control of the commerce of the whole Mississippi Valley. There was at that date no European rival to dispute French domination, for the English of New England and the other Atlantic colonies had not extended their settlements westward across the Alleghanies, and the Spanish inhabitants of New Spain or Mexico had not pushed their conquest farther north than New Mexico. Crozat strading privileges covered an area many times as large as all France, and as fertile as any on the face of the earth. But he was unequal to the opportunity, and, failing in his efforts, soon surrendered the charter.

John Law, a Scotchman, at first a gambler, and subsequently a bold, visionary, but brilliant financier, succeeded Crozat in the privileges of this grand scheme, and secured from the successor of Louis XIV a monopoly of the trade and development of the French possessions in the valley. In order to carry out his wild enterprise he organized a colossal stock company, called -The Western Company, but more generally known in history as The Mississippi Bubble. According to the historian Monette it was vested with the exclusive privilege of the entire commerce of Louisiana and New France, and with authority to enforce its rights. It was authorized to monopolize the trade of all the colonies in the provinces, and of all the Indian tribes within the limits of that extensive region, even to the remotest source of every stream tributary in any wise to the Mississippi. So skillful and daring were his manipulations that he bewitched the French people with the fascinations of stock gambling. The excitement in Paris is thus described by Thiers:

It was no longer the professional speculators and creditors of the Government who frequented the rue Quincarapois, all classes of society mingled there, cherishing the same illusions noblemen famous on the field of battle, distinguished in the Government, churchmen, traders, quiet citizens, servants whom their suddenly acquired fortune had filled with the hope of rivaling their masters.

The rue Quincampoix was called the Mississippi. The month of December was the time of the greatest infatuation. The shares ended by rising to eighteen and twenty thousand francs thirty-six and forty times the first price.

At the price which they bad attained the six hundred thousand shares represented a capital of ten or twelve billions of francs.

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