While D'Iberville descended to his ships, soon to embark for France, his brother, in March, explored Western Louisiana, and, crossing the Red River, approached New Mexico. No tidings of exhaustless wealth were gleaned from the natives; no mines of unparalleled productiveness were discovered among the troublesome morasses; and Saint-Denys, with a motley group of Canadians and Indians, was sent to ramble for six months in the far west, that he might certainly find the land of gold. In April, Le Sueur led a company, in quest of mineral stores, to mountains in our northwestern territory. Passing beyond the Wisconsin, beyond the Chippewa, beyond the St. Croix, he sailed north till he reached the mouth of the St. Peter's, and, entering that river, he came to the confluence of the Blue Earth. There, in a fort among Iowas, he passed the winter, that he might take possession of a copper mine, and on the return of spring fill his boats with heaps of ore.

Le Sueur had not yet returned to Biloxi, when 1701. news came from the impatient ministry of impover- May 30. ished France that certainly there were gold mines on the Missouri. But bilious fevers sent death among the dreamers about veins of precious metals and rocks of emerald. Sauvolle was an early victim, leaving the chief July 22. command to the youthful Bienville; and great havoc was made among the colonists, who were dependent on the Indians for baskets of corn, and were saved from famine by the chase and the net and line. The Choctaws and the Mobile Indians desired an alliance against the Chickasaws; and the French were too weak to act, except as mediators. In December, D'Iberville, arriving with re-enforcements, found but one hundred and fifty alive.

1702,

Early in 1702, the chief fortress of the French was transferred from Biloxi to the western bank of the Mobile River, the first settlement of Europeans in Alabama; and during the same season, though Dauphine Island was flat, and covered with sands which hardly nourished a grove of pines, its excellent harbor was occupied as a convenient station for ships. Such was Louisiana in the days of its founder. Attacked by the yellow fever, D'Iberville escaped

with his life, but his health was broken; and, though he gained strength to render service to France in 1706, the

1706. July 9.

1702.

effort was followed by a severe illness, which termi nated in his death at the Havana. In him, the colonies and the French navy lost a hero worthy of their regret. But Louisiana, at his departure, was little more than a wilderness claimed in behalf of the French king, and occupied by scarcely thirty families. The colonists were unwise in their objects, searching for pearls, for the wool of the buffalo, for productive mines. Their scanty number was scattered on discoveries, or among the Indians in quest of furs. There was no quiet agricul tural industry. Of the lands that were occupied, the coast of Biloxi is as sandy as the deserts of Libya; the soil on Dauphine Island is meagre: on the delta of the Mississippi, where a fort had been built, Bienville 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 snakes, the croakings of 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 hopeless character of the barrens warned the emigrants to seek homes farther within the land.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

BUT, at least, the Spaniards at Pensacola were no longer hostile; Spain, as well as France, had fallen under the sovereignty of the Bourbons; and, after ineffectual treaties for a partition of the Spanish monarchy, all Europe was kindling into wars, to preserve the balance of power or to refute the doctrine of legitimacy. This is the period when Spain became intimately involved in our destinies; and she long remained, like France, the enemy to our fathers as subjects of England.

The liberties of the provinces, of the military corporations, of the cities of Spain, had gradually become merged in despotism. The position of the peninsula, separated from Europe by a chain of mountains, and intersected by high ridges, had not favored the spirit of liberal inquiry; and the inquisition had so manacled the national intelligence that the country of Cervantes and Calderon had relapsed into inactivity. The contest against the Arabs had been a struggle of Catholic Christianity against Moslem theism; and, as it had been continued for seven centuries with inexorable consistency, had given to Spanish character the aspect of exclusiveness, which was heightened by the pride consequent on success. France had amalgamated provinces; Spain had dealt with nations: France had triumphed over separate sovereignties; Spain over religions.

But Spain was not only deficient in active intelligence, and in toleration; she also had lost men. From Ferdinand the Catholic to Philip III., she had expelled three millions of Jews and Moors; her inferior nobility emigrated to America; in 1702, her census enumerated less than seven million souls. The nation that once would have invaded

England had no navy; and, possessing mines in Mexico and South America, it needed subscriptions for its defence. Foreigners, by means of loans and mortgages, gained more than seven eighths of the wealth from America, and furnished more than nine tenths of the merchandise shipped for the colonies. Spanish commerce had expired; Spanish manufactures had declined; even agriculture had fallen a victim 1701. to mortmains and privilege. Inactivity was followed Oct. 30. by poverty; and the dynasty itself became extinct.

If the doctrine of legitimacy were to be recognised as of divine origin, and therefore paramount to treaties, the king of France could claim for his own family the inheritance of Spain. That claim was sanctioned by the testament of the last Spanish king, and by the desire of the Spanish people, whose anger had been roused by the attempts at partition. The crown of Spain held the Low Countries, the Milanese, and the Two Sicilies, besides its world in the Indies; and the union of so many states in the family of the Bourbons seemed to threaten the freedom of Europe, and to secure to France colonial supremacy. William III. resolved on war. In the last year of his life, suffering from a mortal disease, with swollen feet, voice extinguished; too infirm to receive visits; alone, separate from the world, at the castle of St. Loo, he rallied new alliances, governed the policy of Europe, and, as to territory, shaped the destinies of America. In the midst Sept. 18. of negotiations, James II. died at St. Germain; and

1702.

1701.

Louis roused the nationality of England by recognising the son of the royal exile as the legitimate king of Great Britain. The war for the balance of power, for colonial territory, and for commercial advantages, became also a war of opinions.

1702.

Louis XIV., "that wicked persecutor of God's people," as he was called in a Boston pulpit, was grown old; and the men of energy in his cabinet and his army were gone. There was no Colbert to put order into his finances, no Louvois to inspire terror; Luxembourg was dead, and the wise Catinat no more a favorite. Two years passed without reverses; but the battle of

1701.

Blenheim revealed the exhaustion of France. The armies of Louis XIV. were opposed by troops collected from England, the empire, Holland, Savoy, Portugal, Denmark, Prussia, and Lorraine, led on by Eugene and Marlborough, who, completing the triumvirate with the grand pensionary Heinsius, combined in their service money, numbers, forethought, and military genius.

The central colonies of our republic were undisturbed, except as they were invited to aid in defending the borders, or were sometimes alarmed at a privateer hovering off their coast. The Five Nations, at peace with both France and England, protected New York by a mutual compact of neutrality. South Carolina, bordering on Spanish Florida; New England, which had so often conquered Acadia, and coveted the fisheries, were alone involved in the direct evils of war.

Sept.

South Carolina began colonial hostilities. Its gov- 1702. ernor, James Moore, by the desire of the commons, placed himself at the head of an expedition for the reduction of St. Augustine. The town was easily ravaged; but the garrison retreated to the castle, and the besiegers waited the arrival of heavy artillery. To obtain it, a sloop was sent to Jamaica; but an emissary had already announced the danger to Bienville at Mobile, who conveyed the intelligence to the Spanish viceroy; and, when two Spanish vessels of war appeared near the mouth of the harbor, Moore abandoned his ships and stores, and retreated by land. The colony, burdened with debt, pleaded the precedent "of great and rich countries," and confident that "funds of credit have fully answered the ends of money, and given the people a quick circulation of their trade and cash," issued bills of credit to the amount of six thousand pounds. To Carolina, the first-fruits of war were debt and paper money.

This ill success diminished the terror of the Indians. The Spaniards had long occupied the country on the Bay of Appalachee; had gathered the natives into towns, built for them churches, and instructed them by missions of Franciscan priests. The traders of Carolina beheld with