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 Bienville, 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 hun- · dred 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 immenso 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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ern by the Rio del Norte and the Rocky Mountains, and extending from Dauphine Island to the Lakes. He shall have it with its mines and minerals, its forests, game and peltries, its fisheries and agriculture. He accepts the offer; and the world thinks he knows his business, and predicts for him a splendid result. La Motte Cadillac is governor at Detroit, and he becomes Crozat's partner. Their plan is to open trade between France and the West India Islands, Mexico, and Louisiana. Thus shall gold and gems be gained. But Spain refuses him leave to trade; declining to allow his vessels to enter any of her ports; and as for Louisiana, who is there to buy his goods? and there is no merchandise that he can carry thence. Thus the speculation of the great merchant fails, and at the end of five years he surrenders his charter, having paid thirty thousand dollars for the chance of making an experiment. But there are others ready, eager to accept the opportunity; confident that there is wealth in Louisiana, and that it can be obtained, if only the right means are taken to get it. The mind of England and France is at this time. possessed of a mania for speculation.

In the first the South Sea Company is offering an ample field for the knavery of rogues and the folly of dupes; in the other, John Law, a canny Scot, who had established a private bank, and was doing a thriving business, assuming the style and position

of an opulent capitalist, possessing the entire confidence of the generous but profligate regent, Philippe d'Orleans, and of the aristocracy and wealth throughout the country, was busily engaged in organizing various companies and schemes; a bank of France, a company of the Indies, and a western company. The latter procured a charter of twenty-five years to monopolize Louisiana. Its stock was divided. into two hundred thousand shares, the par value of which was five hundred livres each. All classes of people throughout France having money, are stockjobbers. The bourse opens with the beat of drum. Abbés, bishops, cardinals, dukes, royal princes, and the fairest women of the realm throng the Exchange, and vie with each other in the financial competition. The shares of the Louisiana speculation are greedily bought up. Maps delineating its vastness, illustrating its fertility and wealth; a soil richer than that of the Delta, mountains of silver richer than that of Potosi, and of gold, with which the land of Ophir cannot be compared; picturing prosperous states and private towns, quays thronged with shipping and busy tradesmen; are exhibited in Paris, and inflame the already excited fancy of the country. It is whispered as a great secret, but gains a wide circulation, that ingots of Louisiana gold have been seen in Paris, but by whom no one pauses to inquire. The lust for sudden riches has deprived the people of their com