the St. Lawrence, La Chine, still commemorates in its name the soaring enthusiasm which led him into the belief that the broad river above the chute was the pathway to China. The dream of reaching China he was forced to abandon, though his foot pressed far on the road which, two hundred years after his time, came to be held the shortest way thither; but he almost made actual a vision scarcely less bold. Discovering the Ohio, traversing the Great Lakes, first of white men descending the Mississippi to its mouth, it was he who in 1682 gave the name Louisiana to the vast region lying east and west of the great river-the Mississippi Valley, in fact—and took possession of it in the name of his sovereign. He was able to map out fairly the great domain into which he had penetrated, and conceived the thought long cherished by his successors, of running a chain of posts from the St. Lawrence strongholds to the cities he meant to build in the south near the Gulf. If things had been a little different much might have come to pass in his time. Louis XIV could appreciate a brave man and him a fleet and resources. If only the

gave

Huguenots, driven out by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes just at this time, could have come to New France as the exiled Puritans fifty years before had come to New England! But even the wilderness had no hospitality for them; no Protestant could set foot in New France. There was no popular movement thither of any kind. Misfortune overtook La Salle. His fleet was wrecked; among his followers he seems to have had no faithful friend but Tonty, and he was far to the north among the Illinois. Mutiny that

D'bberuille

But the line of great colonizers was by no means extinct. The mantle of La Salle fell upon Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who perhaps was not inferior to him in force or fire. Iberville, a young Canadian seigneur, won his

spurs by driving the English out of Hudson Bay, establishing a control in the north that endured for years. He was as efficient in tropic seas, on the Spanish Main, as among the icebergs. But his chief desert was the establishment upon the

Gulf of Mexico of a secure French colony, which made it possible for his young brother Bienville, a few years later, in 1717, to lay the foundation of New Orleans.

As the eighteenth century proceeds the colonizing of Louisi

ana goes on in a course characteristically French. The nation takes little interest, few voluntary settlers coming to the new country; when immigrants appear, it is to hunt gold or fur-bearing beasts among the savages, in desultory wandering, rather than to till the soil and establish homes. The Government is quite indifferent. In the evil days of the Regency, and of Louis XV, the colony is

first given over to the monopolist Crozat; then to John Law, to be exploited in the Mississippi Bubble. Of the welfare of the

Fan

unfortunate plantation there is no heed; but fortunes may be made out of it for courtly spendthrifts, or the bankrupt Government gain relief at the expense of the far-away dependency. The Mississippi Bubble, so ruinous to those caught by its flattering iridescence,

did, through some good providence, bring benefit to Louisiana. It was necessary to Law's schemes that the land should be peopled; and though the methods for procuring emigrants were misrepresentation and even atrocious kidnaping, some thousands were deported of a fairly respectable character. These, finding return hopeless, at last, though heart-broken, made the best of the situation, and a substantial town became established

upon the river-bank. The preponderance of men in the community proving to be an ele ment of insecurity, a grotesque remedy was sought the shipping from France of cargoes of marriageable girls, filles à la cassette, so called from the little trunks in which each prospective bride carried the trousseau provided for her by the Government. The girls were speedily mated on arriving at the levee, and many a proper and happy union was the result. In this direct and business-like matchmaking the Ursuline nuns played an important part, recruiting the companies in France, chaperoning them sometimes on the voyage, and sheltering them when they reached Louisiana-by no means the smallest of the serv ices rendered by the excellent sisterhood to the infant plantation.

But while the record of the settlement is so largely one of struggle and suffering, brilliant adventurers were active carrying the flag of France farther and farther into the wilderness. With little support or countenance, except from their own intrepid spirits, they strove heroically to roll back the mystery from the face of the great continent. Du