m with a luxuriance which they
seemed to borrow from the vegetation of the country. The distance
between the Mississippi and Biloxi was not so easily overcome in those
days as in ours, and the means which the two brothers had of communing
together were very scanty and uncertain.

Sauvolle died August 22, 1701, and Louisiana remained under the sole
charge of Bienville, who, tho very young, was fully equal to meet that
emergency, by the maturity of his mind and by his other qualifications.
He had hardly consigned his brother to the tomb when Iberville returned
with two ships of the line and a brig laden with troops and provisions.

According to Iberville's orders, and in conformity with the King's
instructions, Bienville left Boisbriant, his cousin, with twenty men,
at the old fort of Biloxi, and transported the principal seat of the
colony to the western side of the river Mobile, not far from the spot
where now stands the city of Mobile. Near the mouth of that river there
is an island, which the French had called Massacre Island from the
great quantity of human bones which they found bleaching on its shores.
It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but
Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy fingers upon her skinny
lips, and answered not....

The year 1703 slowly rolled by and gave way to 1704. Still, nothing was
heard from the parent country. There seemed to be an impassable barrier
between the old and the new continent. The milk which flowed from the
motherly breast of France could no longer reach the parched lips of her
new-born infant; and famine began to pinch the colonists, who scattered
themselves all along the coast, to live by fishing. They were reduced
to the veriest extremity of misery, and despair had settled in every
bosom, in spite of the encouragements of Bienville, who displayed the
most manly fortitude amid all the trials to which he was subjected....

Iberville had not been able to redeem his pledge to the poor colonists,
but he sent his brother Chateaugue in his place, at the imminent risk
of being captured by the English, who occupied, at that time, most of
the avenues of the Gulf of Mexico. He was not the man to spare either
himself or his family in cases of emergency, and his heroic soul was
inured to such sacrifices. Grateful the colonists were for this act of
devotedness, and they resumed the occupation of their tenements which
they had abandoned in search of food. The