La Petite Belle, moored in
Palacios, provides a three-dimensional, seaworthy model of La Salle s ship that was found on the bottom of
Matagorda Bay.
The beauty of the 17th-century French ship was lost in the muddy floor of the bay halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi. The half-scale model in Palacios recreates the flourishes on the bow and the vibrant colors of her hull.
Ren
é
-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, left France in 1684 with four ships looking for the mouth of the Mississippi River, but landed on the Texas coast. The smallest of the ships,
La Belle ran aground and sank in a storm.
1871-1916: The sad and lonely story of the ‘Hermit Author of Skaneateles’
Posted May 15, 2021
An inset drawing of Brainard Munn from his book La Petite Belle. Courtesy of the Skaneateles Historical Society archives
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In 1871, a new book, “Love on the Wing,” written by Charles March, created a sensation in the town of Skaneateles.
Nearly every resident wanted a copy of it, not because it was very good, or even told an interesting story, but because the townspeople could easily identify themselves and their neighbors as the book’s characters.
“The book was well read in Skaneateles,” the Syracuse Herald would later write in 1899, “for out of the long list of characters in it every one of the village recognized a great many personal friends.”