Carondolet regarded the Indians as Spain’s best defence against the Americans,(153) yet the whites prepared for defence, and in anticipation of the proposed French expedition of George Rogers Clark, a garrison of thirty men and an officer was placed at Ste. Genevieve, opposite Kaskaskia. Carondolet said: “This will suffice to prevent the smuggling carried on by the Americans of the settlement of Kaskaskias situated opposite, which increases daily.”(154) Early in 1796, a petition was sent from Kaskaskia to Congress. The petitioners desired that they might be permitted to locate their donation of four hundred acres per family on Long Prairie, a few miles above Kaskaskia, on the Kaskaskia River, and that the expense of surveying the land might be paid by the United States. The act granting the donation-land had provided for its location between the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi. This land the petitioners declared to be private land and some of it was of poor quality.(155) Confirmation of land claims directed to be made upon the Governor’s visit in 1790 were delayed by the lack of a surveyor and the poverty of the inhabitants.(156) The petition was signed by John Edgar, William Morrison, William St. Clair, and John Demoulin(157) “for the inhabitants of the counties of St. Clair and Randolph”(158)—the Illinois counties. The petitioners ranked high in the mercantile and legal life of the Illinois settlements, but they must have been novices in the art of petitioning if they thought that a petition signed by four men from the Illinois country, with no sign of their being legally representative, would be regarded by Congress as an expression of the opinion of the Northwest Territory. The part of the petition relating to lands was granted, but the major part, which related to other subjects, was denied on the ground that the petitioners probably did not represent public sentiment.(159) During this same year Congress denied a number of petitions for the right of preëmption in the Northwest Territory, because such a right would encourage illegal settling. It was also during this year that the first sales of public land in the Northwest Territory were authorized. The land to be sold was in what is now Ohio. No tract of less than four thousand acres could be purchased.(160)