Returning with great difficulty against the fierce current of the Mississippi, swollen, it is probable, at this season, with floods, the French experienced much annoyance from the attacks of the treacherous Quinipissas, whose hostility they had already tasted in coming down. Having slain several of these assailants, the adventurers, emulating the savage custom of their foes, scalped the bodies, and carried off the usual ghastly trophies of Indian warfare. This ferocious practice, indeed, seems always to have had a singular fascination for men once thoroughly committed in hostility with the savages. Near half a century later, if the old ballad may be trusted, we find the English (and especially their chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Frye,) indulging a similar taste at a battle on the frontier of Maine; and, indeed, at a much later date, our backwoodsmen were frequently in the habit of emulating, in this respect, the most barbarous tribes which they encountered.

CHAPTER III.

EXPEDITION OF LA SALLE BY SEA IN QUEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. HE MISSES THE ENTRANCE.-LANDS AT THE BAY OF ST. BERNARD.-FOUNDS A COLONY.-MISFORTUNES AND DISCOURAGEMENTS.- -HE SETS FORTH OVERLAND

FOR CANADA. HIS DEATH.-FATE OF THE SURVIVORS

OF THE EXPEDITION. OF THE COLONY OF ST. LOUIS.

HAVING arrived at Quebec, La Salle, unable to obtain the requisite means for following up his grand discovery, again embarked for France, and again preferred his suit at the court of Versailles. Four vessels, one a large frigate, were placed at his command, and with a brother and two nephews, seven priests, a number of artisans and volunteers, with a hundred soldiers, and sufficient crews, in all two hundred and eighty souls, on the 24th of July, 1684, he sailed from La Rochelle for the mouth of the Mississippi. The sullenness and mutinous disposition of Beaujeu, the captain of the frigate, at an early day, produced loss and trouble to the expedition, and eventuated in its entire discomfiture. Arriving in the Gulf of Mexico, the voyagers searched in vain for the expected outlet. "Nothing is

more difficult than to discover, from sea, the entrance even of the largest river, on an unknown coast, unless the position has been accurately determined beforehand, and the attempt is doubly embarrassing, where the stream, like that of which he was in search, deDouches, through numerous outlets, upon a marshy shore."

Accordingly, after a long and fruitless search for the desired entrance (which, it seems, they passed on the 10th of January, 1685) Beaujeu, disregarding the orders of La Salle, kept westward for a hundred leagues, and anchored in the Bay of St. Bernard, not far from the present site of Galveston. Finding a large stream flowing into this bay, the governor supposed that it might be one of the western mouths of the Mississippi, and concluded to make a landing. His expectations, indeed, had been miserably disappointed on discovering the nature of his outfit. The alleged artisans proved mere impostors; the soldiers were decrepid and worn-out invalids, disbanded as unfit for service. This heterogeneous and ill-assorted crowd, to the number of two hundred and twenty, being landed, Beaujeu hastily deserted them, and sailed recklessly away. The commander, though much discouraged by these untoward circumstances, set to work and built a fort, which he called St. Louis. He next spent four months in coasting along the shore with canoes, vainly seeking the Mississippi, and unable to obtain any information from the unfriendly savages. In April, he set forth towards New Mexico, in hopes of discovering mines, but with equal ill-success.

Tonti, who had been left in command of a fort on the Illinois, according to previous agreement with La Salle, now descended the Mississippi to the sea, where he expected to find his associate and the projected colony; but, after searching the shores of the gulf for months in vain, sadly relinquished the attempt, and returned to his station on the Illinois.

The unfortunate little colony founded by La Salle, its numbers diminished by losses in every expedition, was fast verging to extinction. In less than two years from its foundation, only thirtyseven men were alive, and famine and Indian hostility threatened the speedy destruction of the whole. The dauntless commander, his spirit unbroken by misfortune or disappointment, continued to project fresh schemes of adventure and discovery. With sixteen companions, on the 12th of January, 1686, he set forth on the terrible enterprise of traversing the wilderness, and penetrating overland to Canada. Among them was his young nephew Moranger,

a youth of haughty temper, who incurred the enmity of the rest, and a mutinous spirit soon broke out. One of the party, named Lancelot, two days' journey from the fort, being taken ill, was permitted to return. His brother earnestly desired to bear him company, but La Salle refused to allow it, on account of the weakness of his force. The invalid, returning alone, was murdered by the Indians; and the surviving brother, from that moment, thought only of revenge. For two months, while the expedition slowly made its way toward Canada, he nourished schemes of vengeance, without the opportunity to put them in execution. With his accomplices, he then commenced with the murder of Moranger; and having concealed themselves in a cane-brake, shortly after, they fired from ambush at their unfortunate commander. He fell mortally wounded, and presently died, on the 19th of May, 1686, it is said, near the western branch of the Trinity. "Thus obscurely perished one of the bravest and most indefatigable of the many brave and unconquerable spirits who, at the cost of their lives, have won renown as pioneers in the New World. His memory will always be associated with the great river which he explored and laid open to mankind."

The assassins, to avoid the vengeance of the friends of their victim, hastily quitted the party, and struck a new track in the wilderness. They all perished, either at the hands of each other, or of the hostile savages. The little company of survivors, now reduced to seven, still kept on their toilsome journey to the north-east. The Indians through whose country they passed, treated them kindly; and four months after the death of their commander, they arrived at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi. Here, to their surprise, they found a cross, which had been set up by certain companions of Tonti, whom, in ascending the Mississippi, he had left at this place. Encouraged by this solitary sign of Christianity and civilization, they pursued the journey to Canada, and, wonderful to state, finally succeeded in reaching it.

The miserable remnant of the colony, left by La Salle at Fort St. Louis, soon perished under the hostilities of the tribes surrounding that little station. Five children only were spared, who afterwards falling into the hands of the Spaniards, revealed the unhappy fate of the settlement. Of the two hundred souls of which it was composed, these, and the seven companions of La Salle who made their way to Canada, alone survived. Such was the miserable result of the first attempt to colonize the richest and most valuable region of all North

America-an attempt, unhappily, only the prototype of successive efforts in the same direction. The colonization of Louisiana, like that of its neighbour, Florida, for a long series of years presents little except continually renewed misfortune, suffering, and mortality.

CHAPTER IV.

NEGLECT OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.-EXPEDITION OF LEMOINE
D'IBERVILLE: HE FOUNDS SETTLEMENTS AT BILOXI, MOBILE, AND
ISLE DAUPHINE.-TONTI.-UNPROSPEROUS CONDITION OF
LOUISIANA.-DEATH OF D'IBERVILLE.-HIS BROTHER
BIENVILLE-CROZAT. THE MISSISSIPPI COMPANY.
-GREAT IMMIGRATION, SUFFERING, AND MORTAL-
ITY. NEW ORLEANS FOUNDED.-CONTINUED
IMMIGRATION.-VAST EXTENT OF LOUISIANA.

FOR ten years after the death of La Salle and the destruction of his colony, the French made no attempt to settle the Mississippi Valley -the few adventurous voyagers who had resorted there from Canada. betaking themselves to hunting and to traffic in furs, and gradually assimilating with the Indians in character and habits. In 1697, Lemoine D'Iberville, a brave Canadian, distinguished for his naval services, represented to the court of France the importance of this neglected region, and obtained the means for a fresh attempt at settlement on the Gulf. With two vessels, on the 17th of October, of that year, he set sail from Rochefort, and directed his course to the Bay of Pensacola. The Spaniards there remonstrated against his alleged intrusion, yet he proceeded, and examined the harbour of Mobile, the river Pascagoula and the Bay of Biloxi, and finally arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi. The certainty of this discovery was confirmed by the extraordinary incident of a letter, written by Tonti thirteen years before, giving an account of the country, with most valuable directions, being preserved by the Indians, and handed to D'Iberville.

He passed up the Mississippi, and, entering the outlet still bearing his name, discovered Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, and the

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Bay of Biloxi. Here he founded a small settlement, which, however, on account of the disadvantages of the site, was afterwards removed to the Bay of Mobile, and thence again to the Isle Dauphine, where it finally found a resting-place. A fort called Balize was also erected at the mouth of the Mississippi; and after completing these and other works in furtherance of colonization, D'Iberville, leaving his brothers Saurolle and Bienville in command, proceeded to France for fresh assistance in his enterprise. In December, 1699, he returned, and soon after received a visit from the brave and adventurous Tonti, who, having heard of the foundation of the new colony, with only seven companions, had descended the Mississippi to greet him. After a few years of doubtful prosperity, a terrible fever desolated the little colony, carrying off Saurolle and eventually D'Iberville, and leaving only a hundred and fifty-five souls alive. These were in a miserable condition, the spots on which they were located-Biloxi, Isle Dauphine, and the Balize-being little more than deserts. The fruitless search for gold and the trade in furs engrossed their attention, to the neglect of husbandry or permanent occupation of the country. Bienville, the surviving brother, by his perseverance and talent for command, still managed to sustain the feeble interest of France in these distant regions. A considerable extent of the vast wilderness, now so populous, was surveyed. Red River and the Missouri had been ascended to great distances by enterprising adventurers, and small settlements were planted on the Yazoo and the Washita.

The Protestant exiles, driven from their homes by the cruelty of Louis XIV., but still retaining the true French loyalty and affection for their country, now offered that, if tolerated in the exercise of their religion, four hundred families of them would remove to Louisiana. But that bigoted sovereign, by nature and education one of the vilest and most tyrannical that ever disgraced a throne, replied "that he had not expelled them from his kingdom to form a republic of them."

By 1712, there were only twenty families in Louisiana, living in the most abject poverty, and destitute of the means of escaping from their forlorn situation. In that year Antoine Crozat, who had amassed a vast fortune by trading to the East Indies, purchased from the crown a grant of the entire country, with a monopoly of commerce for sixteen years. His object was not colonization, but contraband traffic with Mexico, in order to secure a return of the precious metals;