Bienville, however, held firmly to his purpose and, in 1723, procured the royal permission to transfer the seat of government from Mobile to the new settlement on the banks of the Great River. Thus, at last, was La Salle's prophetic dream realized. France had become awake to the importance of concentrating her strength where it could be effective, rather than frittering it away on the shores of the Gulf. One of the most striking evidences of the warm interest which the King felt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decent girls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from which they were called _filles a la cassette_, or girls with a chest), who were to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, in marriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; and the homes thus established soon gave to the population of the city a more quiet and orderly character. [Illustration: Le Moyne de Bienville] Through various experiences, chiefly disastrous wars with the Natchez, that remarkable people {285} whom La Salle visited on his great exploration, and whom the French finally broke up and scattered, and with the Chickasaws in Mississippi, that hardy breed of warriors who had fought Soto so fiercely, and who now sent the Frenchmen back discomfited, Bienville in his later years lost much of his earlier prestige. But the fact remains that it was he who grasped the meaning of La Salle's plan, he who founded New Orleans, and he who guided the struggling colony through its perilous infancy. He well earned his title of "Father of Louisiana." [1] These matchless horsemen, probably unsurpassed in the world, are also great jockeys, passionately fond of horse-racing and deeply versed in all its tricks. The following laughable account of a race that he witnessed is given by Col. Dodge in his very entertaining book, "Our Wild Indians": "A band of Comanches once camped near Fort Chadbourne, in Texas. Some of the officers were decidedly 'horsey,' owning blood horses whose relative speed was well known. The Comanche chief was bantered for a race, and, after several days of manoeuvring, a race was made against the third best horse of the garrison, distance four hundred yards.