After these explorations Iberville departed again for France, to solicit additional assistance from the government, and left Bienville in command of the new fort on the Mississippi.  It was very hard for the two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, to be thus separated, when they stood so much in need of each other’s countenance, to breast the difficulties that sprung up around them 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 aspect of things was suddenly changed; abundance and hope reappeared in the land, whose population was increased by the arrival of seventeen persons, who came, under the guidance of Chateaugue, with the intention of making a permanent settlement, and who had provided themselves with all the implements of husbandry.