FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

Letter 20.
Montesano [West Florida, Spanish Territory, now Louisiana] 30 April 1809
[From Jean-Baptiste Florian to his wife, still in England. Addressed on the outside to:]
M. Florian
In care of Messrs. Simpson and Danson, Merchants
London
Forwarded New York
_____ 18, 1809
Yours very _______
R. O. Duplanty
I hope, my beloved, that all my letters are reaching you, but I greatly fear that they are
reaching you only after a long delay, due to the negligence and ill-will of Mr. Cheriot, to
whom I was in the habit of sending them. Would you believe that he has forwarded to
me only your first letter since the beginning of October, and it was only 15 days ago that
I received the letters from Peter, Joseph and Laura, dated the 4 th , 5 th and 6 th of October.
Not a single more recent one has reached me, although ships arrive every day from New
York to New Orleans, and although mail arrives regularly each week. <strong>The</strong>re is something
mysterious beneath this behavior of his. So send all your letters to me in care of
Duplanty, Merchant at New York, who will send them to Emmanuel.
I hope nevertheless that you won’t have much to write me after receiving this, and that
you are getting ready to set out with your brothers and dear little girls to rejoin me.
I have told you that I was at the home of Mr. William Herries, brother of Colonel Herries
of the Westminister Horse Volunteers [this latter phrase in English], who is coming to set
up a steam engine on the banks of the Mississippi River, where this land is situated. He
wants to found a city here, and wants for us to establish ourselves here, where he wants
me to run a college and you and a colleague to run a boarding school for young ladies.
He will give us every possible assistance, paying in advance for the site and the materials
for the building. In the meantime he is giving me the lower floor of his house and a small
building next to it, to lodge students whom I may procure any day.
Fifteen days ago I sent some advertisements to Emmanuel to put in the papers published
in New Orleans. I am awaiting the results.
You can judge the profit they make here, in charging 300 piasters a year for board, which
makes almost 70 pounds sterling 36 -- and you can buy a young steer here, [p 2] ready to
slaughter, weighing more than 400 pounds, for only 10 to 12 piasters. This makes meat
cost, at the most, threepence halfpenny per pound, and other things are in proportion. A
36 This is an exchange rate of 4.29 piasters to the pound.
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