erected on Starved Rock, overhanging Illinois River, a more permanent fortification than the palisades of Crèvecœur. To it he gave the name St. Louis, and then endeavored by negotiations to make it the centre of French influence on the Mississippi. Indeed, about it soon gathered thousands of the Illinois and neighboring Indians, including the Shawanoes, or Shawnees, from the lower Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; and he even sought to attract the Chickasaws, who were so long to hold the key to the history of Louisiana. The Illinois were agricultural, raising especially corn and squash, unlike the Sioux beyond the Mississippi. La Salle, possibly having in mind the "reductions" of his enemies the Jesuits, wished gradually to make all the Indians agricultural, and thus about Fort St. Louis were the beginnings of civilization in the great valley and of the harvests of the Illinois region, so important ever since. The next year brought only disaster, for Le Fèvre de La Barre succeeded Frontenac and did all he could to belittle La Salle's achievement, interrupt his trade, and draw off his followers. Worse yet, Colbert was dead, and Seignelay, the son who succeeded him, was not to take the same interest in colonial affairs. Even the king was convinced by La Barre that the great discovery was useless, and La Salle found it necessary to repair to France. There, however, such was his energy that everything succeeded to his wish. Louis changed his mind. as to the value of the discovery, remembering that Colbert had thought a port on the Gulf necessary for his glory and the commerce of France. La Salle did not fail to point out that the English were in danger of hemming in the existing French settlements as in a vise between their establishments on Hudson Bay and in New England, and his remedy would be a countermove by which the great Mississippi valley should become French and the English in their turn confined between the mountains and the ocean. To do this a fort was needed about sixty leagues above the mouth of the Mississippi, and La Salle had the address to suggest also that by Red River, which he called the Seignelay, he could conduct

an expedition westwardly and strike rich Mexican mines like Santa Barbara in New Biscay. There was a short war in progress at the time with Spain, and La Salle may have counted on peace as relieving him from this part of the plan, although he may not have known that it was impracticable because the wilds of Texas intervened; but it may have had its effect on the king and his ministers.

As with the king, so with France. Great interest was excited in the proposed expedition to the Gulf of Mexico. A Spanish decree in the time of Philip II. attempted to close the Gulf to all foreigners, but it was now the time of Louis XIV. and not of Philip. The French proposed to override the claims of Spain, and prepared a fleet of four vessels at La Rochelle. It was in 1684, the year before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to banish from France so many of her best and most industrious citizens, but it was not the wish of the king to make this a colony of Huguenots. If any went along, it was not because they were wanted, and yet the people who were gathered up from the streets for colonization might far better have been of the industrious Reformed. It is sometimes hinted that the commander of the expedition, Beaujeu, was a friend of those persistent enemies of La Salle, the Jesuits; at all events, it was the misfortune of the explorer now as so often to fall out with superiors and inferiors alike. Intent upon his own plans and ambitions, he expected all to obey and none to share his counsels.

The expedition sailed and, after touching at Santo Domingo to refresh the many sick, proceeded to the Gulf. One vessel was unfortunately captured by the Spaniards, and thus La Salle lost what was in it and could only expect opposition now that his plans were known. The 6th of January, 1685, the fleet probably passed the mouth of the Mississippi, but, from misjudging the currents, thought they were much further to the east, and so continued on their way, until Beaujeu claimed that the supplies of the ships threatened to run short and insisted upon returning. Making

a virtue of necessity, La Salle and his colonists went ashore at what we now call Matagorda Bay. Minet, the engineer, seems to have returned with Beaujeu and made a map which has survived, showing exploration after leaving La Salle, thus proving that the pretence was false as to shortness of provisions.

In a sense the colony planted on what we now know as Texan soil is beyond our scope, and yet it was in Louisiana and, as La Salle thought, near a western effluent of the Mississippi. There was one series of misfortunes from the start. In landing, the vessel Aimable was wrecked, and in exploring not long after the Belle, given him by the king himself, was also lost; and worst of all, they soon found that, so far from being near the Mississippi, they were in an inhospitable wilderness far to the west, separated from it by many a weary league and by almost impassable rivers. This, of course, settled the matter with La Salle. His desire was not to plant a feeble French colony, doubtless ultimately to share the fate of Fort Caroline. If he was not near the Mississippi, it was necessary to move the colony there.

This, too, was impossible, and after a year, seeing never a sail except some Spanish ships, which fortunately did not see them, he undertook to go with a few men overland to the Illinois for aid, just as he had gone, on the wreck of the Griffin, to Canada from the Illinois. With him went Joutel, an old retainer of the family, besides La Salle's brother,Cavelier the priest, and others. After interminable sufferings some of the men became mutinous, and at last, on March 19, 1687, near the bank of Trinity River, La Salle was murdered from an ambuscade. Several of his friends were killed at the same time, and the murderers took charge of everything. The priest and Joutel were compelled to go along, but after a while the assassins fell out among themselves, and Joutel and Cavelier managed to make their way to the Arkansas, where they found some Frenchmen. These the faithful Tonty had left when, in 1686, he heard

of La Salle's trouble and went to the Gulf. He had explored for miles in each direction along the coast, and left a letter with the Indians on the Mississippi for La Salle-a letter to have so strange a future. From the Arkansas, with this assistance, the wanderers made their way to Fort St. Louis, and thence by Canada to France, concealing La Salle's death for various unworthy motives until they reached the

court.

With the death of the leader the government seemed to think it useless to make any attempt to relieve the colony, and the rest is soon told. The anxious Spaniards had not been able to find Fort St. Louis of Texas from the sea, and it was not until 1689 that an expedition by land under Alonzo de Leon, guided in part by a French deserter, came upon the site of La Salle's settlement. They found it wrecked, the buildings and palisades dismantled, and the only trace of human beings consisted of bones, some with long hair, evidently of women. Not strong at best, they had fallen victims to attacks of the Indians and perished almost as completely as Raleigh's colony at Roanoke.

The second settlement of the French in the more southern parts of North America had failed as completely as the first. It had not needed a Menendez to finish the story. It seemed as if the fatality which had accompanied Spanish endeavors to find and utilize the Mississippi had fallen, like the fateful shirt of Nessus, upon their successors. It was to need no decree of the French king similar to that of Philip to keep his subjects from further exploration of what Joutel calls the "fatal river." France had entered upon a different career from that which had seemed hers when Colbert was at the helm; and as Virginia was to Elizabeth, and Caroline to Charles IX., so was Louisiana to Louis XIV.,-named for the sovereign, but a name of sadness and not of inspiration. Stat nominis umbra.

CHAPTER X

IBERVILLE AND MOBILE

Louis seemed to have forgotten Louisiana. It was certainly not the chief object of his diplomacy and conflict. His personal rule was from Mazarin's death in 1661 until his own in 1715, and it is sharply divided into two parts by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In the earlier period while Holland and England were contending for the mastery of the seas, Louis became the predominant power upon the continent; for his minister Colbert had succeeded to the centralizing policy of the cardinals, developed the internal resources of France, and for the first time turned the attention of the country to the ocean also. France during this period waged two wars with Holland, her old protégé, the first ending on the formation of the Triple Alliance to prevent the further annexation of Flanders and adjacent provinces; the other in revenge for that check, and closed by the Peace of Nimeguen.

Thus the object of the first part of his reign had been to increase the resources of France at home and to give her an adequate frontier toward the Rhine and the Scheldt, but from the death of his great minister Louis's tendencies went further. France being already developed, economically speaking, and there being immediately opposed no enemy worthy of the French army, Louis was disposed to abandon the traditional moderate attitude. By attacking Holland he ceased to be the protector of the Protestant States, and