A few years after this period, a body of Jesuit priests and nuns arriving from France, gave a new impetus to the town. They made a most fortunate location, and their property greatly augmented in value. But these pious adventurers were also to be disturbed. The Pope of Rome not only expelled that sect from Europe, but pursued them in American exile. Their property in New Orleans, variously estimated to be worth now, from fifteen to thirty millions, was then confiscated and sold for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. These unfortunate people still further had to satisfy the tyrannical decree to the full measure, by leaving Louisiana! Fifty-one years elapsed from the settlement of Orleans until it was visited by that dreadful disease, the yellow fever, and we may ascribe that affliction, as we may do many other entailed evils, to the English. They introduced it by importing to Louisiana a cargo of slaves; and now these philanthropists would be willing to see our nation exterminated, and our throats cut, because we are pursuing a system of mild domestic slavery, when they imposed it upon us in the most heartless and aggravated form, by kidnapping and robbery!!! But I am digressing. To terminate this very rapid and imperfect sketch of the history of Orleans, I will introduce a brief summary, with the remark, however, that the Louisianians had every impediment thrown in their way in endeavoring to become a prosperous and happy people. They were handed over by the French government to a chartered company, who afterwards returned them to the government. They were then sold to Spain, and a remorseless governor of that nation introduced a system of plunder and oppression. Afterwards Spain ceded this country again to France, and France sold it to the United States for fifteen millions of dollars! A sum that startled many of our economical republicans of that day, but which, compared to the advantages of the purchase and the revenue since derived, was a most paltry sum. In 1778 a fire consumed nine hundred houses. In 1785, seventy years after it was founded, the population was only four thousand seven hundred and eighty. In 1791 the first comedians arrived from Cape Francois. In 1800 Spain receded the province to France, and it was purchased by the United States in 1803. In 1810 the population amounted to twenty-four thousand five hundred and fifty-two souls: Ever since the cession to the United States the strides of the city of Orleans have been rapid, and her march onward! CHAPTER III. GEN. JACKSON.--THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.--THE POPULATION AT THAT DAY, AND OTHER THINGS ABOUT THE CRESCENT CITY.