SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES 11 
The great shell reefs on the Gulf shore are valuable for lime, road metal, 
chicken feed, etc. 
Salt is one of the great resources of the State, with a production of 
529,280 tons in 1931, valued at $1,962,690, according to the United 
States Bureau of Mines. A part of the salt is used for the manu- 
facture of sodium carbonate, soda ash, caustic soda, and sodium sul- 
phite, used for glass, in paper making, and in dyeing. Large factories 
in New Orleans produce these and other chemicals. 
The Gulf region has an annual rainfall averaging about 62.5 inches, 
and although high temperatures occur during the summer, the heat is 
tempered by nearly constant breezes from the Gulf; these breezes also 
diminish the chill of the winter. 
The history of Louisiana is full of interesting events, of which the 
first was the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi River by the 
Spanish explorer, Painfilo de Narvéez in 1528. In 1542 Luis de 
Moscoso, who had accompanied Hernando de Soto to the mouth of 
the Red River, descended to the mouth of the Mississippi and sailed 
down the Gulf coast to Mexico. In 1673 Jacques Marque tte and Louis 
Joliet, sent by the Canadian colonial government to find an outlet to 
the West, descended the great river to its junction with the Arkansas 
ee aad in 1682 René Robert de La Salle sailed to its mouth, 
possession of the region under the name of Louisiana, in honor 
ot his patron Louis XIV. The region claimed by La Salle included the 
entire drainage basin of the Mississippi River and much of the Gulf 
coast. Three years later he returned with a colony which he expected 
to locate near the mouth of the river, but he missed the Mississippi 
and landed instead at Matagorda Bay, in Texas, near which he was 
murdered in 1687. In 1699 Pierre d’Iberville, a French naval officer, 
landed at New Orleans with a colony, the first permanent settlement 
of the region, but he established it in Spanish territory (near Biloxi, 
Miss.). In 1712 Antoine de Crozat, a French merchant, obtained the 
exclusive right to trade in ‘‘ Louisiana,’ but he surrendered this grant 
in 1717 to the Company of the West, which began sending out colo- 
nists. In the following year Capt. Jean de Bienville, a brother of 
Iberville, landed a colony of 68 persons at the site of New Orleans. 
In 1719 the first cargo of slaves arrived from Africa, valued at $150 
each. This was just a century after the first slave cargo landed at 
Jamestown, Va. The seat of government was established in 1722 at 
New Orleans, and in 1726 the settlement had a population of 800. 
Life was made difficult by floods, Indians, diseases, and hurricanes. 
November 3, 1762, France, finding the territory a burden, ceded the 
portion west of the Mississippi, together with the city and island of 
New Orleans, to Spain in the secret treaty of Fontainebleau; the next 
year the remainder of Louisiana, east of the Mississippi, was ceded to 
England. The boundary between Spanish and British possessions, 
