perplexed in his attempt to discover an advantageous site for his metropolis. During his persevering and diligent explorations for this object, he is one day busily examining the muddy boiling stream of the Mississippi, with boats and sounding lines, when suddenly first the white sails of a large ship, and then the unwelcome ensign of St. George present themselves to his vision, slowly moving up the narrow stream. It is a British corvette of twelve guns. Without a moment's hesitation, the bold and quick-witted Frenchman hails her; finds that Captain Barr is in command; that her consort is in waiting at the river's mouth; and that he is upon the errand of planting an English colony in those parts. Bienville immediately advises him that he is within the dominions of the King of France, that he must forthwith get out of them; and that unless he does, he, Bienville will use the ample means within his command at the French fortifications a little way above, to make him. He volunteers likewise the valuable piece of geographical information, that Captain Barr is in the wrong river; for that the Mississippi is much further West. The thick-headed Englishman is at a stand, seemingly more fearful of Bienville's castle in the air, than confident in his directions; he grumbles, and asserts that the British had discovered the river half a century before, and that he will come back with force enough to substantiate the claim by seizure. He turns about,

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however, for the present, and departs; doubtless, leaving the cunning Gauls in great merriment; but does not come back, and the place of this effectual deceit is yet named the English Turn.

Descending the river in another of his many expeditions, Bienville noted a bend in the tortuous stream, which assumed the shape of a crescent. Examining the land' upon its margin, he resolved that notwithstanding its unpropitious appearance, here should his town be built. Staking the spot, he returned to Mobile and dispatched thence fifty convicts for the purpose of clearing the ground of the forest undergrowth. The task was a Herculean one; the means at Bienville's command to carry it forward were small; and, moreover, the project was uncompromisingly opposed by his associates in the government. Nevertheless, his will was irresistible, and all obstacles at length yielded. By the year 1723, five years after the work had begun, a thriving and prosperous town appeared from out the tangled cane-brake, overshadowed by the funereal forest of the cypress swamp, and washed upon its southern edge by the yellow current of the great river. He named the place in honor of a prince who "forgot God, and trembled at a star"—the reckless regent, Duc d'Orléans. The experience of a century and a quarter has set its seal on the sagacity of its founder. The village, a site for which he struggled so hard and so long to find, to build which cost him so many manful

efforts, has grown to be the second commercial centre of the New World. Its exports in any given year are now greater than those from the whole East Indian empire. It is the entrepôt from the sea for a realm well-nigh as wide as the whole vast expanse of Hindostan. But while Britain derived from the slave trade the means to build up her empire in the East, and thus again acquired boundless wealth and commercial prosperity for herself, France gained nothing from · her effort to establish feudalism in the wilderness, but loss, disaster and defeat. The city of New Orleans, founded by Bienville, seems to have perpetuated in its history the characteristic traits of the man from whom it was named. There, dissoluteness walks brazen-fronted and unchecked; and by its side the divine figure of generosity. Nowhere in this country is vice so rampant, and sin so unblushingly exposed. Nowhere are men so openly eager in the pursuit of interdicted aims, and so reckless as to the methods of attaining them. Yet when the fearful figure of the plague casts his dark shadow over the swamp-engirdled town, when the pestilence walketh in darkness, and the destruction wasteth at noon-day, when it may be said almost without exaggeration that a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, the bravo, the gambler, and the debauchee, forget their trades of crime; the merchant, banker, and artisan quit their occupations; the gay,

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frivolous and worldly leave their mirth and wine, and all are found rivalling and sometimes surpassing the self-devotion of the priest and the physician; ministering angels in the houses of woe, carrying bread, wine, and medicine to the hovels of the poor, bending over their inmates with inexpressible solicitude, and nursing them. through lonely vigils with a mother's care and tenderness. Nowhere are money and life so wildly squandered; yet nowhere is wealth so bountifully bestowed in charity; or love and life so freely given at the call of suffering.

The best portion of the inhabitants of Louisiana were as yet derived from Canada. These hardy emigrants, trained by solitude, rigor, and hardship, to frugality, enterprise and virtue, became the most thrifty and reliable members of the new State. Their only property, their coarse garments, a knapsack and staff, they yet possess indomitable courage and resolution, and willingness to labor. Plantations are opened on the banks of the Mississippi, above and below the new city, in the environs of Fort Rosalie, in the Red, Yazoo, and Arkansas Rivers. Rice, tobacco, and indigo, are successfully cultivated. The fig is transplanted from Provence, and the orange from Hispaniola. Neat cottages and pretty gardens cause the wilderness to bloom in many a spot, and all wears the golden hue of promise and success. Moreover, a thriving trade is opened with the coun

tries of the Illinois and Wabash. Lumber, tallow, beeswax, bacon, hides, peltries, are received from these middle regions and shipped again to France. Coureurs du bois and voyageurs ascend the Mississippi and its tributaries to their sources, discover hundreds of mines of gold and silver, which always prove to be copper and lead; smoke the calumet, negotiate treaties of peace and amity with the distant aborigines, and return with such stores as they have. gathered in traffic, their memories overrunning with stirring and marvellous stories, the product of their fancies and adventures, more pleasing to their gossips and neighbors than their substantial gains.

Nor are the spiritual interests of the people overlooked. An Ursuline convent has been established in New Orleans; churches are built in every village, missions established in every settlement; and Jesuits go whereever the hardy trader ventures, doing their utmost to convert the red savages from their heathenism. The indefatigable Bienville, dreading the approach of the English and their traffic with the Indians on the north east, builds Fort Toulouse, near the spot where the limpid waters of the Coosa and Tallapoosa form the Alabama. Farther to the West, on the river which bears the name, he erects Fort Tombigbee. No sooner does he receive the news that war has been declared between France and Spain, than he crosses from Mobile, captures Pensacola, blows up the forts, and leaves