imagined, that they had, from this nominal title, a just right to
those antient dominions of the crown of Britain: but what is of worse
consequence perhaps, they have equally deceived and imposed upon many,
by the extravagant hopes and unreasonable expectations they had formed
to themselves, of the vast advantages they were to reap from those
countries, as soon as they had usurped them; which when they came to
be disappointed in, they ran from one extreme to another, and
condemned the country as good for nothing, because it did not answer
the extravagant hopes they had conceived of it; and we seem to be
misled by their prejudices, and to be drawn into mistakes by their
artifice or folly. Because the Missisippi scheme failed in 1719, every
other reasonable scheme of improving that country, and of reaping any
advantage from it, must do the same. It is to wipe off these
prejudices, that the following account of these countries, which
appears to be both {iii} just and reasonable, and agreeable to every
thing we know of America, may be the more necessary.

We have been long ago told by F. Charlevoix, from whence it is, that
many people have formed a contemptible opinion of this country that
lies on and about the Missisippi. They are misled, says he, by the
relations of some seafaring people, and others, who are no manner of
judges of such things, and have never seen any part of the country but
the coast side, about Mobile, and the mouths of the Mississippi; which
our author here tells us is as dismal to appearance, the only thing
those people are capable of judging of, as the interior parts of the
country, which they never saw, are delightful, fruitful, and inviting.
They tell us, besides, that the country is unhealthful; because there
happens to be a marsh at the mouth of the Missisippi, (and what river
is there without one?) which they imagine must be unhealthful, rather
than that they know it to be so; not considering, that all the coast