that "tenue de grand Seigneur," which threw such quaint picturesqueness, not only over his personality, but over the city which he founded, as is noticeable by many a token to-day.
Bienville, nevertheless, was a born coureur de bois, as Iberville was a born buccaneer. With a trusty Canadian companion or two, he paddled his pirogue through the bayous, and threaded the forests of Louisiana, until he became as expert a guide as any Indian in the territory. And, with his native Canadian instincts, to assist natural capacity for acquiring the dialects, habits, manners, and etiquette of the savages, he learned to know them, and thereby to govern them, as no Indian in his territory could ever assume to do. For twenty-seven years his authority over them was absolute. The stiff parchment and rigid sentences of government etiquette have rarely conveyed reports so redolent of forest verdure, freshness, and natural adventure as his. It comes to us still, in fragrant whiffs, even from the printed page, and one likes to dream that in that ancient swarm of government officials in the marine office of that day in Paris, there may have existed some infinitesimal clerk, with—despite his damnable fate—an adventurous heart. With what eagerness must he not have turned, as six months by six months rolled by, to the belated courier from Louisiana, and the budget from Bienville. What a life-giving draught,—a Fenimore Cooper draught,—to the parched plodding mind!
It was not all, however, nor even the best of it, in Bienville's reports, nor in the reports sent to the government by the facile, if unorthographic pens of his companions, young French and Canadian officers whom
