Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/232

 attacked by yellow fever, and his health was broken down by its effects upon his constitution. He died at Havana, in 1706. Louisiana, at his death, was little more than a wilderness: in the whole of its borders there were not more than thirty families.

The major part of the settlers found it necessary to abandon Biloxi, and removed to Mobile, near the head of the bay of that name. This was the first European settlement within the limits of what is now the State of Alabama, and it remained, as Mr. Hiidreth states, for twenty years the head quarters of the colony. No regular systematic industry had place among them; pearls, gold mines, furs, the wool of the buffalo, were sought for by the colonists. Biloxi was a sandy desert, and the soil on Dauphin e Island was meagre and unproductive; in fact, to use Mr. Bancroft's poetic language, "Bienviile and his few soldiers were insulated and unhappy, at the mercy of the rise of waters in the river; and the buzz and sting of mosquitoes, the hissing of the snakes, the croaking of the frogs, the cries of alligators, seemed to claim that the country should still for a generation, be the inheritance of reptiles,—while at the fort of Mobile, the sighing of the pines and the hopeless character of the barrens, warned the emigrants to seek homes farther within the land." Recruits, it is true, were added from time to time to the colony; but the whole number of the colonists does not seem ever to have exceeded two hundred at any one time during the next ten years; and had it not been for provisions sent from France and St. Domingo, even these would probably have perished by starvation.

Hardly sustaining itself in existence, even by such means, the colony became a burden to Louis XIV., and in 1712, he granted to Anthony Crozat the exclusive privilege for fifteen years of trading in all that immense country, which, with its undefined limits, France claimed as her own under the name of Louisiana. Bienviile, still acting as Governor, was succeeded, in 1713, by Cadillac, as Governor, he himself being appointed Lieutenant Governor. Crozat charged Cadillac to look especially after mineral wealth; and the new Governor, whose character is presented in a very ludicrous light by Mr. Gayarré, expected soon to realize an immense fortune. But his expectations met with a mortifying failure, and he was dismissed without ceremony from his office, whose duties he had discharged to so little profit to any one. Crozat, wearied out with the ill success of his plans for establishing commercial relations with the Spaniards, and getting a share in the trade with the Indians, which trade was monopolized by the English, begged the government, in 1717, to take the colony off his hands. At this date, the whole population, white and colored, was only about seven hundred, and notwithstanding Bienville's activity and success in conciliating and overawing the Natchez Indians, among whom he had placed Fort Rosalie, and notwithstanding various efforts in behalf of the colony, it was at this date in a very depressed state.

France, however, was unwilling to