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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

De Soto, whose party had voyaged this way a hundred and sixty years before. All doubt is thus removed and the goal at length is reached. They have gained their river, to which they give the name of St. Louis; but where shall they build their town? The banks of the stream, for many a league from the sea, are only an oozy quagmire; gloomy forests and tangled brakes cover the country to the landward, far as the eye can penetrate; and when they attempt to land, the swamp is their only resting-place. No rood of dry firm ground seems to arise within this illimitable morass. They return to Biloxi and finally resolve to build their metropolis on Mobile Bay, near the present site of the city of that name, and the infant settlement is named Fort Condé.

Our adventurous friends have come to found a new empire, not with the plow and axe and loom, not with honest toil and honorable industry; but they will gather the lumps of gold which, as they fondly imagine, strew the surface of the earth and lie imbedded within its depths. They will seek the priceless pearls which line the coast. They will obtain grants of countless acres from the crown, and become feudal barons and great seigniors, and thus will they erect their state. The low pine barrens which constitute the margin of the Gulf, on which they have settled, afford no chance for tillage; and were the land rich as alluvium could make it, they would disdain the

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toil. Thus, all their supplies, save the harvest of the waters, must be brought from France. But the voyages of ships are uncertain; and ere long they are threatened with famine. Unused to, the broiling summer heats of these low latitudes, they are soon visited by disease. The invisible stealthy form of bilious fever emerges from the swamps and lays about him like a giant with a two-edged sword. That hundredhanded monster, the yellow fever, imported from the West Indies, stalks amongst the defenceless settlers, spreading consternation and ruin, until hardly enough living are left to bury the dead. Sauvolle, the admiral's brother, a fair intrepid youth, is amongst the earliest victims; and before six years are passed D'Iberville himself is sacrificed. Alas for the hopes of chivalry! Neither gold nor pearls have yet been found. The colony is well-nigh exterminated by disease and want, and must have perished but for the compassionate aid of friendly Indian neighbors.

The command is now conferred upon Bicnville, on whose wise guidance and skillful management the hopes of the future empire rest. But the materials furnished him are not such as he could desire. Recruits are sent to him by shiploads; insolvent debtors and men of broken fortunes, criminals from the prisons and abandoned women. The most wretched and degraded of mankind are those who are sent to dig the foundations and lay the corner stones of

the future edifice With such instruments what can even a great man like Bienville do? He is satisfied that the dreams about gold and precious stones are idle and empty; that the true hope and welfare of the colony is in agriculture; that the toil of the people can alone yield them the means of subsistence and afford them the materials for trade; that the labor of the husbandman and the mechanic furnishes the only sure basis for commerce; and that their metropolis must be built upon the banks of the great river, so as to command by a practicable and easy highway the resources of the whole interior, and have opened to it a sure and immediate communication with Canada. But he is baffled and disheartened by his filthy and worthless coadjutors, and no real work is accomplished. Thirteen years have passed, a hundred and seventy thousand dollars have been expended and the results are unsatisfactory enough. Only two hundred and eighty settlers, for the most part idle and dissolute vagrants, among whom are twenty domestic negroes, are in the province. The king and council are discouraged; something must be done for Louisiana; but how, or what, are questions hard to settle. At this time there is in Paris a great merchant, one Anthony Crozat, who has amassed an immense fortune by trade and speculation. The king offers him the monopoly of the country flanked on its eastern side by Florida and the Alleghanies, on its west

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