Why La Salle Hung French Fortunes on a Western Branch: The Maps of Franquelin and Coronelli.

In 1684, La Salle proposed to establish a naval base for France on the doorstep of New Spain by sea. The site he chose was a fork in the Mississippi River 180 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. This was where Bayou Lafourche formed a western branch, a distributary of the great river. When the difficult captain of his frigate escort vanished in a fog and headed south in January 1685, La Salle was forced to pursue him for more than 2 weeks down the Texas coast. Presented with a short calendar to achieve the possible invasion of Mexico, and facing contrary winds back to Galveston Bay, where he imagined the mouths of the main channel to be, La Salle headed into Matagorda Bay, where he hoped to find his western branch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]