Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/182

 CHAPTER IX.

THE IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF LA SALLE, AND EARLY COLONIZATION BETWEEN THE ALLEGHANIES AND THE MISSISSIPPI.

The work begun by La Salle was taken up, after the peace of Ryswick (1697) had terminated the war between the French and English, by Lemoyne D'Iberville, a Canadian by birth, who, in 1698, sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi from San Domingo, accompanied by his two brothers, Sauville and Bienville, two hundred colonists, and a few women and children.

After a successful voyage, our hero cast anchor in the present Mobile Bay (N. lat. 30° 40´, W. long. 80°), and on the 2d February, 1699, landed his people on Ship Island, where huts were at once erected for the temporary shelter of the emigrants. While this work was in progress, D'Iberville explored the neighboring Bay of Biloxi and the mouth of the Pensacola River—already, as we know, visited more than once by the Spanish—and at the end of the month made his way thence, with forty-eight picked followers, to the mouth of the Mississippi.

Entering the muddy waters, encumbered by the floating trunks of rotting trees, which formed the outlet of the great Father of Waters, the explorers sailed slowly on between the low alluvial banks till they came to a Bayagoula village, just below the junction of the Red River with the Mississippi, where all doubt as to their having found the mighty stream they sought was set at rest by the production of a letter, in their own language, left with the Indians by Tonti long years before.

Now completely satisfied as to his whereabouts, D'Iberville made his way back to Ship Island in a south-easterly direction, through the Manshac Pass and Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, so named after two French ministers accompanying the expedition. Finding the colonists suffering from the unhealthiness of their situation, their leader sanctioned their removal to the Bay of Biloxi, where a fort was at once erected, which was to