On May 18, the French wagon train, guided by a farmer who lived near Dallas and who had come to Houston to sell two bales of cotton, moved out through the woods toward Dallas. Some of the colonists were riding horses, two or three riding in carriages, and some were walking. A few of the men who had been drafted as teamsters were laboring with oxen, trying to get them to move along. Poorly built wagons and the absence of roads greatly hindered progress. They camped at night all together for protection against Indians, the women and children sleeping in the wagons and the men and boys on the ground. Eggs, milk, and poultry were purchased at farm houses as the caravan traversed the sparsely settled districts; some stealing was done, but, generally speaking, the colonists conducted themselves well on the entire trip. All the way from Houston to La Réunion Savardan reports the colonists were expecting welcoming groups from La Réunion to come out and meet them. This, of course, never occurred because the people already at camp were finding it difficult to keep things going. They arrived at La Réunion June 16, 1855.[6] Several other groups and individuals arrived at La Réunion during the following eighteen months. In fact, many arrived just in time to see the colony disband, leaving them to shift for themselves. Philip Goetsel, a Belgian, had a ranch of seventeen sections on Mountain Creek, twelve miles west of Dallas, on which he established a colony of Belgians. Several cabins were built on low lands which were subject to overflow; other improvements were made, but the colony never did become more than a dependency of La Réunion. Goetsel, however, planned to build a huge city upon the land, which he proposed to name Louvain in honor of his home city in Belgium. He had invested thirty thousand francs in La Réunion and when he noticed that it was going to pieces, he demanded his money with the intention of investing it in the “Louvain scheme.” The directors of La Réunion refused him his share on the grounds that he was building Louvain in opposition to La Réunion and that it would draw all the trade away from the community stores of the colony.[7] Still another party, time of arrival uncertain, was the one led by M. M. Raizant composed of nine people. These apparently came by New Orleans and Galveston, perhaps preceding Savardan’s party. La Réunion was made up of high class, well educated and cultured people. A brief biography of the founders of the colony has already been given in the first chapter of this book, but a short sketch concerning several will here serve to give the reader a better comprehension of the colonists as a group.