724 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
timbered states legislate wisely on this matter, and the prairie states follow the 
example of Kansas in the cultivation of forests. Let us look at a few facts. 
It has been estimated that 30,000,000 of our people use wood as fuel, con- 
suming 100,000,000 cords annually. We have about go,oo0 miles of railroads 
consuming 400,000 acres of timber every year. Steamboats, factories, brick 
yards, etc., consume annually about 35,000,000 cords. And more than 70,000 
factories of wood articles also consume about $410,000,000 of timber every 
year. The total forest cutting annually is estimated at nearly one thousand mil- 
lions of dollars. Again we ask, at this enormous and wholesale rate of forest de- 
struction, can the supply meet the demands of the rising west and still provide 
for the wants of the east, unless our forests are protected by law ? 
BUS TOMA, INO 2S. 
THE SPANISH EXPEDITION TO MISSOURI IN 1719. 
JOHN P. JONES, KEYTESVILLE, MO. 
The Memoirs, Historical* Journals, and other writings in which the French 
have narrated the events that occured during their occupation of the vast territory 
which they called Louisiana, contained frequent mention of an expedition which 
left Santa Fe, N. M., about the year 1719 for the purpose of establishing a mili- 
tary post in the upper Mississippi Valley as a barrier to the further encroachments 
of the French in that direction. One of the objects aimed at by the Spanish 
authorities in sending out this expedition is said to have been the destruction of 
the tribe of Indians known as the Missouris, who were supposed to be especially: 
under the influence of the French; intending by the destructionof this nation to 
intimidate those of the surrounding localities and make them more inclined to 
ally themselves with the Spaniards than with the French. ‘The account of this 
expedition most generally accounted as correct during the last century, is the 
. one given in Dumont’s Historic Memoirs of Louisiana.* Dumont was one of a 
party ascending the Arkansas river in search, of a supposed mass of emeralds, 
and says: ‘‘ There was more than half a league to traverse to gain the other 
bank of the river, and our people were no sooner arrived than they found}there a 
party of Missouris, sent to M. de la Harpet by M. de Bienville§ then Com- 
*Memoires Historiques sur La Louisiana, 2 Vols., Paris, 1753. The author was a Lieutenant in the 
French army and lived twenty-two years in the colony. His work has never been translated, though French 
in his Historical Collections of Louisiana prints a portion of one volume, and Du Pratz, in his work 
makes large drafts on both. 
+ Bernard de la Harpe, a French officer who was very active under Bienville during the first years of the 
colony. In 1719 he built a fort on Red River. In 1720 surveyed a portion of the coast of Texas and took 
possession of the country near the Bay of St. Bernard. He received a concession of lands on the Arkansas. 
At the date mentioned by Dumont he was the leader of an expedition sent to explore the Arkansas Rivere 
He wrote a work called “ Historical Journal of the Establishment of the French in Louisiana,” which 
remained in manuscript until the year 1831, when it was printed in French. 
¢ The second governor of Lguisiana and the “‘ Father of the Colony.” His careeris a matter of history. 
