The street names change at Canal Street, the
highways become narrower as you enter the French quarter, and the
pavements are made of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast
in sailing ships. Nor is the difference purely physical. For though they
will tell you that this part of the city is not so French and Spanish as
it used to be, that it has run down, that large parts of it have been
given over to Italians of the lower class, and to negroes, it remains
not only in appearance, but in custom, thought and character, the most
perfectly foreign little tract of land in the whole United States. Long
ago, under the French flag, it was a part of the Roman Catholic
bishopric of Quebec; later under the Spanish flag, a part of that of
Havana; and it is charming to trace in old buildings, names, and customs
the signs of this blended French and Spanish ancestry.
La Salle, searching out a supposed route to China by way of the
Mississippi River, seems to have perceived what the New Orleans
Association of Commerce perceives to-day: that the control of the mouth
of the river ought to mean also the control of a vast part of the
continent. At all events, he took possession in 1682 in the name of the
French King, calling the river St. Louis and the country Louisiana. The
latter name persisted, but La Salle himself later rechristened the
river, giving it the name Colbert, thereby showing that in two attempts
he could not find a name one tenth as good as that already provided by
the savages.
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