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chief command to the youthful
Bienville; and great
havock was made among the colonists, who were dependent on the Indians for baskets of corn, and were saved from famine by the chase and the net and line.
The
Choctas and the
Mobile Indians desired an alliance against the Chickasas, and the
French were too weak to act, except as mediators.
In December, D'Iberville, arriving with reinforcements, found but one hundred and fifty alive.
Early in 1702, the chief fortress of the
French was
transferred from
Biloxi to the western bank of the
Mobile River, the first settlement of Europeans in
Alabama; and, during the same season, though Dauphine Island was very flat, and covered with sands which sustained no grasses, and hardly nourished a grove of pines, its excellent harbor was occupied as a convenient station for ships.
Such was
Louisiana in the days of its founder.
Attacked by the yellow fever, D'Iberville escaped with his life, but his health was broken; and, though he gained strength to render service to
France in 1706, the effort was followed by a
severe illness, which terminated in his death at the
White's Recopi lacion, II. 654. |
Havana.
In him the colonies and the
French navy
lost a hero worthy of their regret.
But
Louisiana, at his departure, was little more than a wilderness claimed in behalf of the
French king; in its whole borders, there were scarcely thirty families.
The colonists were unwise in their objects, searching for pearls, for the wool of the buffalo, for productive mines.
Their scanty number was scattered on discoveries, or among the Indians in quest of furs.
There was no quiet agricultural industry.
Of the lands that were occupied, the coast of
Biloxi is as sandy as the deserts of Lybia; the soil on Dauphine Island is meagre: on the delta
