Gallatin wrote to Isaac Briggs on 2 July, providing detailed instructions for superintending the survey of public lands in Orleans Territory. In conformity with the 2 Mch. act of Congress regarding land titles and claims in Orleans and Louisiana, and also “with the President’s directions,” the survey was to include the lands to be located for Lafayette, any existing land claims in need of survey or resurvey, the “alluvial or inundated country” between the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche on the east and the Atchafalaya River on the west, and lands west of the Atchafalaya deemed fit for cultivation. Briggs was also to lay out townships west of the Atchafalaya from the Red River “to the sea shore,” but was not to survey “farther west than the Meridian of Natchitoches” (Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934-75, 28 vols. description ends , 9:459-62; U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855-56, 8 vols. description ends , 2:324-9).