The historical data here recorded, respecting Renault's operations, have never, I believe, appeared in print. They were elicited in the course of a legal investigation, instituted between the heirs-at-law of Renault, the agent of Crozat, in 1723, and sundry individuals, who claimed the same grants on the authority of a date subsequent to the transfer of Louisiana to the United States.
The drawings I give of the lead-furnaces which are peculiar to that section of country, are from actual measurement, done under the eye of an operative smelter of approved skill at Potosi, and are conceived to be minutely correct.
HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. NEW YORK, Nov. 25, 1819.
In republishing this memoir, advantage has been taken of several judicious suggestions respecting it, made in a critical notice of it, by the able editor of the American Journal of Science, in the volume of that work for 1821.
The rage for adventure, which the brilliant exploits of Cortez, Pizarro, and other Spanish adventurers, had excited throughout Europe, continued for a long time to agitate the public mind, and had not abated at the commencement of the eighteenth century, when an idea of the mineral riches of Louisiana had become prevalent. Gold and silver were then the chief objects which engrossed attention; and in search of them, the earliest discoverers were led to penetrate into the interior. The physical aspect of the country was in general such as to flatter the most sanguine expectations of mineral wealth; and the further the country became known, the more interesting was found its mineralogical character. To men whose preconceived ideas of a country were already high, such appearances must have had the most inspiriting effect, and lightened the embarrassments they encountered in exploring a wilderness. Many of the useful metals were thus met with, and gold and silver mines were reported to have been discovered in several places. Red river, the Arkansas, and the river La Platte of the Missouri, were particularly mentioned; and from the evidence which is afforded by the discovery of ancient furnaces, &c., there is reason to conclude that those metals were wrought at a very early period. Judging from appearances, they were ready to conclude the country exhaustless in mines; and the most exaggerated accounts of them appear to have been transmitted to Europe, particularly to France, where a lively interest was felt in the prosperity of the infant colonies in Louisiana and Illinois; and in the descriptions published at that day, the lands are reputed to equal in fertility the banks of the Nile, and the mountains to vie with the wealth of Peru.