The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941 Page: 205
546 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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De Bellisle on the Texas Coast
further information on de Bellisle's adventures in the wilder-
ness. It would be valuable also to have some day a translation
of this document which, according to de Villiers, was written
after the "Relation" and completes this account.
Simars de Bellisle was born in 16953 and left La Rochelle
in 1719. His "Relation" starts at this point and the transla-
tion reads as follows:
Relation of what has happened to me since the 14th
of August, 1719, when I left from La Rochelle, with
the vessel "Marichal d'Estre6" to come to Louisiana
until the 10th of February, 1721.
We set sail to go to Santo Domingo and after two
weeks of sailing we saw a small Irish ship. Our Cap-
tain chased it and having caught up to it ordered it
to strike sail, which the little ship did. The Captain
of our ship sent his second officer on board the Irish
ship, with orders to take butter or anything else he
might find. Immediately the second officer went to the
little ship. When he reached it, he ordered the hatch
to be opened; not finding any butter, he carried out
two small barrels of wine, and two cases of raisins,
which he put in his shallop. The captain of the Irish
ship, seeing that he was impudently robbed, jumped
headlong into the shallop of our ship in order to pro-
test, believing that such an order could never have
been given and that the officer who was sent [to his
ship] had stolen the money which was given to him
to pay for what he had taken. But no one had given
the second officer any money. The latter began to
beat him [the captain of the Irish ship] with a stick
and chased him back to his vessel. He [the second
officer] then returned. As soon as he arrived we set
sail for San Domingo, which we passed without any
of the pilots on board noticing it. We learned this
from a pirate who attacked us in the following manner.
It was already night when we saw him coming. He
caught up with us in less than an hour and running
behind us, without asking who we were, shot a cannon
ball at us. At the same time he shouted to us to put
our shallop to sea and to surrender immediately. After-
wards, seeing that we were stronger than he, he low-
ered the sails and ran behind us. Nevertheless, he
Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXI, No. 4 (October, 1938), 970. These
lists are most enlightening to the student of early Louisiana history.
3M. de Villiers, La Decouverte du Missouri et l'Histoire du Fort .ufrtans
(Paris: Librairie Honor6 Champion, 1925), 83-84.205
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941, periodical, 1941; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146052/m1/225/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.