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the thunders of the Vatican and the sceptre of the prince.

At first, sovereigns sought to employ commerce as they had before used the sword and the brain-to further the ends of tyranny; but the young giant was mightier than his old masters; he smote them down and laughed them to scorn.

The theory of conquest and of colonization in the New World adopted by the European monarchs was virtually this: that the recently acquired territory was to be subjected to the supreme will of the king, and tributary to the profit and pleasure of himself and his capital. Mexico, Peru, and the Indies were regarded by Charles and Philip as so many orchards and mines, whose products might gratify the royal palate and fill the royal coffers. Elizabeth, James and Charles seemed to consider Newfoundland and New England simply as fisheries, the sole business of whose people it was to supply Britain with cod and mackerel; while Louis the Fourteenth granted to his favorites unlimited demesnes in New France and on the Mississippi, and charters of monopoly for the fur trade therein. The great monarch's courtiers and mistresses wanted costly peltries to decorate their noble persons; to this end the Indians might hunt on the borders of Superior or by the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, and the traders transport their precious merchandise from

Quebec. No vessels, save those under the flag of the proprietary monarch, might trade in a provincial port. Thus did the kings seek to bind the infant commerce with the fetters of monopoly.

In due time the regulation of trade comes to be regarded as a prime article in treaties between nations. The courts of Madrid, Paris and London are bidders for the tribute of the seas. All the arts of diplomacy are brought to bear by the royal competitors and their envoys, to gain the coveted prize. The tactics of negotiation are exhausted in many a keen encounter; but first Spain, and afterwards France are outwitted, and England, by the treaty of Utrecht, 1713, is acknowledged mistress of the deep.

I have thought it might be an attempt not devoid of interest, to place before you the effort of France to transplant Feudalism into the soil of the New World, and to carry thither her chivalry. In virtue of the discoveries of James Marquette the Jesuit and priest, the first European who sailed on the waters of the upper Mississippi, and of the Sieur Robert Cavalier de la Salle, the bold trader, the first to follow the stream to the sea, France laid claim to all the regions bordering the Father of Waters, and upon his tributaries. The tract extended from the foot of the Appalachian chain to the head-waters of the Missouri; from the Balize to Itasca Lake. But it was a dim cloudy realm to Europeans; known

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to them only by the marvellous and exaggerated reports which had reached them from the few explorers. The Mississippi had never been entered from the Gulf except by Andrew de Pez, a Spaniard, about 1680, and of his discovery no trace remained. The brave La Salle had perished in attempting to find its mouth. But the difficulty of the discovery only the more inflamed the imagination and enthusiasm of France, already kindled by the reported goodliness of the land. As soon as the Grand Monarque had brief space to rest from his wars, he gave heed to the importunate cravings of some of his subjects that they might go out and possess the fruitful and illimitable region to which the name of Louisiana was given in honor of his most Christian majesty. A little fleet of two frigates and two smaller vessels was fitted out in the port of Rochelle, from which the illstarred La Salle had sailed fourteen years before. The command was intrusted to D'Iberville, a noble admiral of the French navy, who had spent most of his life in the New World, warring with the icebergs, or the more implacable fury of his English adversaries about Hudson's Bay. A man of strict integrity, undaunted courage and unblemished reputation, idolized by his countrymen, and the most approved officer of the French navy, he was now to try his fortunes in a region bordering upon the tropics. With him sailed his two younger brothers, Sauvolle

and Bienville, who were to be his partners in the perils and the honors of the enterprise. They weighed anchor in 1698; and on the first of January, 1699, they made land in the Gulf. Their terra firma proved to be a low flat sand island, upon which they found enormous heaps of unburied human bones, which they might have accepted with justice as an omen of the fate of the great Gallic enterprise which they were now initiating. On the suggestion of the horrid remains, they gave to this their first land the name of Massacre Island.

The traveller of our day, en route for New Orleans, quits the pleasant little city of Mobile, and after a sail of thirty miles sees rising from the waters of the Gulf this low desert ridge, which now bears the name of Dauphine Island. Just before reaching it, the boat, turning sharp to the right, proceeds through a narrow pass, and out of this into a series of bays, lakes and passes, defended from the storms of the Gulf by a low chain of sandy bulwarks, and at length reaches the placid waters of Lake Pontchartrain. It was upon the crystalline sands of these ridges that our adventurers bivouacked when preparing for the subjugation of Louisiana; first on Massacre or Dau phine Island, and subsequently on those further to the West. Later they crossed to the main land and where the village of Biloxi now stands, they built a fort of four bastions upon which were mounted

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twelve guns; and over which waved the lilies of France as a token of supremacy. Impatient to discover the great river, which had been called Rio Grande by de Soto, the River of the Conception by Marquette, the Colbert by La Salle, but now because it seems hidden from the eyes of men, the Perdido, the Lost, D'Iberville embarks with his brother, Bienville, a youth of eighteen, and a company of hardy adventurers, in open boats, leaving Sauvolle in command of the fort. As they voyaged towards the west, they observed that the blue waters of the Gulf became discolored and turbid, and found huge trees which had been uprooted far within the continent, and borne by the rushing seething tide far out into the sea. These tokens apprise them that they are near the river's mouth. Before long they reach it, but D'Iberville cannot believe that this is the opening of the majestic stream of which he has heard and dreamed so much. Father Anastase Douay, however, a priest who had been here with La Salle at the time of his discovery, avers that it is. As they toilsomely ascend the rapid current, they discover a party of Indians at the mouth of the Bayou Goula, who have carefully preserved a letter left there fourteen years before by Chevalier Tonti, La Salle's faithful lieutenant, and directed to his master. The natives also show the astonished Frenchman parts of a coat of mail, which had probably belonged to some of the followers of