Many of them
crossed the Mississippi to find new abodes even after it was
announced that the land had passed to Spain.
>From first to last these settlements on the Mississippi, the
Wabash, and the Illinois had remained, in French hands, mere
sprawling villages. The largest of them, Kaskaskia, may have
contained in its most flourishing days two thousand people, many
of them voyageurs, coureurs-de-bois, converted Indians, and
transients of one sort or another. In 1765 there were not above
seventy permanent families. Few of the towns, indeed, attained a
population of more than two or three hundred. All French colonial
enterprise had been based on the assumption that settlers would
be few. The trader preferred it so, because settlements meant
restrictions upon his traffic. The Jesuit was of the same mind,
because such settlements broke up his mission field. The
Government at Paris forbade the emigration of the one class of
people that cared to emigrate, the Huguenots.
Though some of the settlements had picturesque sites and others
drew distinction from their fortifications, in general they
presented a drab appearance.
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