Then in 1682, about 140 years after de Soto’s journey, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, led a group of French explorers on an expedition down the Mississippi River. When he arrived in the lower Mississippi valley on April 9, Cavelier claimed the entire region for France. The new territory (which included present-day Mississippi) was named Louisiana, after France’s Louis XIV. In 1699, the first French settlement in the Mississippi region was founded near present-day Ocean Springs. Unfortunately, the new colonists were unable to make the region a financial success. In 1717, John Law, a financial promoter from Scotland, devised a plan to entice investors to this new land. Law promoted Louisiana as a region with great mineral resources. Although Law’s scheme failed, by 1720, the population was much larger than it had been just a few years earlier.