424 METEOROLOGY. 



relieved, even if some few individuls were benefitted at the expense of 

 the general government. 



This country was first settled under the Spanish government, ceded 

 by that government to France, and by the French government, under 

 the Emperor Napoleon, to the United States in 1803. 



The Spanish government pursued a most liberal policy towards 

 settlers to encourage emigration^ every man who settled in this new 

 country being allowed one hundred arpents, a married man and wife 

 two hundred arpents, each male child also one hundred, each female 

 child fifty, and twenty arpents to each slave, but in no case to exceed 

 six hundred arpents to each family, or one square mile, an arpent 

 being about seven-eighths of an English acre, and no single claim to 

 be more than eighty rods in breadth fronting on the river. 



The purchase took place in April, 1803, was ratified by the Ameri- 

 can Congress in December following, and all settlers from the time of 

 the purchase in April to the ratification of the treaty were allowed 

 the same privilege as those which were taken under the Spanish 

 government. 



The face of the country had been so much changed by the terrific 

 explosions and commotions of these earthquakes, so many fields, 

 dwellings, and other kinds of property destroyed, that Congress passed 

 the law for their relief before alluded to, but the remembrance of those 

 awful scenes still remains in the memory of the few survivors who 

 witnessed them, and will probably linger around the memory of the 

 past until their eyelids close in " the sleep that knows no waking." 



