Discovering New Orleans

The Vieux Carrè—the "Old Square," the original city of New Orleans—is a rectangular settlement on a curvaceous site, on the east bank of the Mississippi River ninety miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico. It has always been a turned around place. It faces, if not the wrong way, at least some other way, looking over its shoulder at other towns (when it looks at them at all) with a sly grin. It was built backwards, too, considering how it got to be where it is, and how people got to it, in the early days.
            Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, claimed Louisiana for France in 1682. Whether he actually saw or, more to the point, noticed the site that became New Orleans is not clear. We know that his expedition floated past it, coming down the Mississippi River from Quebec.
            I have always imagined explorers coming the other way, struggling upriver against the current, the natural levee at what is now Jackson Square rising up directly before them as they push up the straight reach of river below Algiers Point. (This comes from looking always at maps with north at the top, whence also the childhood belief that all rivers flow south, or down the wall.)  La Salle, however, was heading downstream, and saw the site of the Vieux Carrè over his left shoulder, en passant, if he saw it at all.