Note 290 — Chapter XXIV

"Depuis que nous avions quitté cette rivière qu'il croyoit infailliblement estre le fleuve Colbert [Mississippi] nous avions fait environ 45 lieues ou 50 au plus." (Cavelier, Mémoire.) This, taken in connection with the statement of La Salle that this "principale entrée de la rivière que nous cherchions" was twenty-five or thirty leagues northeast from the entrance of the Bay of St. Louis (Matagorda Bay), shows that it can have been no other than the entrance of Galveston Bay, mistaken by him for the chief outlet of the Mississippi. It is evident that he imagined Galveston Bay to form a part of the chain of lagoons from which it is in fact separated. He speaks of these lagoons as "une espèce de baye fort longue et fort large, dans laquelle le fleuve Colbert se décharge." He adds that on his descent to the mouth of the river in 1682 he had been deceived in supposing that this expanse of salt water, where no shore was in sight, was the open sea. Lettre de La Salle au Ministre, 4 Mars, 1685. Galveston Bay and the mouth of the Mississippi differ little in latitude, though separated by about five and a half degrees of longitude.