It was during the Spanish domination that the great conflagration of 1788 took place--when the heart of the _vieu carré_ was left a mere heap of rubbish and ashes. Bienville himself had not a barer spot before him when he laid out the first streets in his clearing than Don Andres Almonester, the Alferez Real had when, in the midst of the public sorrow and grief over the disaster, he offered to rebuild the religious and civil official edifices. His tombstone in the Cathedral gives the list of his claims upon the gratitude of posterity: founder and donor of the Holy Cathedral Church, founder of the Royal Hospital of St. Charles (the present Charity Hospital), founder of the hospital for lepers, of the Church of the Ursulines Convent, of a public school; of the Casa-Curiel (Court-House)--in virtue of which munificence, Don Andres lies buried under the altar of the Cathedral, and a prayer is said for the repose of his soul every day at Vespers. Following the example of the edifices of Don Andres, private buildings were constructed on a style grandiose beyond any that the city had seen before, and the manner of living imitated the manner of building. And now, under the well-regulated, ponderous monotony of the Spanish domination, the city might have enjoyed a repose as immutable as that of her pious benefactor, had it not been for the great stream rolling past her to the Gulf. No longer did the Upper Mississippi flow through virgin forests and savage villages. Out of the independence of the United colonies was born the “West,”--the great West as it was then and is still called, teeming with energy and hardihood, with fruitfulness and prosperity. Before the day of railroads rivers furnished the only outlet to commerce. The Mississippi, gathering up with the waters of its tributaries the harvests of their valleys, bore down to New Orleans a continuous line of flatboats laden to the edge. The cargoes found ready sale and were soon the main food supply of the city, and the sturdy flatboatmen returning to their farms were ever better and better satisfied with their market, and more and more discontented with the foreign ownership of it. In their parlance, the valley owned the river, and the river owned the mouth. Spanish obstinacy and American temper, concessions and evasions, threats and brawls, kept the city for a score of years filled to the brim with political excitement. Outside the wall and canal--the Canal Street of to-day--lay a new city, an American city, populated by flatboatmen and produce traders, against which the gates of the Spanish city were carefully closed and sentinels set at nightfall.