English traders from the Atlantic colonies found active competitors. French influence became dominant in all the great Mississippi Valley. It showed itself in exploration, religion, trade, and war, and was all directed from Mobile. [Illustration: FACSIMILE PAGE OF BAPTISMAL RECORD (1704) WITH THE AUTOGRAPH OF BIENVILLE.] Exploration and religion went together. The Jesuits had not as strong a hold as in Canada, and the _Relations_ throw little light on Louisiana. But the Seminary of Quebec had missionaries like Davion on the Mississippi and at Mobile, and Jesuits were found among the Creeks and Choctaws. The Illinois region was already known, and portages there and eastward became important, where canoes and supplies were carried from the Lakes to head waters of rivers emptying into the Gulf. Their value continued until our own century, and has pointed the way for systems of canals. Le Sueur, who, with his influential family, lived at Mobile, explored the upper Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, whence he carried green earth to France. The Ohio River was occupied to keep back the English, whose traders penetrated even to the Chickasaws and Arkansas, near modern Memphis, and Juchereau established a fort and tannery not far from our Cairo. The Red River was explored in order to bar out the Spaniards and to seize their mines. St. Denis penetrated Texas, and, as a prisoner, visited Mexico. Even the Missouri was ascended in the hopes of finding a way to the Pacific and to the Chinese trading there. Of course, the Mobile waters were well known, and fringed with industrious plantations. In 1714, Bienville took advantage of a war between the Creeks and English colonists to found Fort Toulouse among the Alibamon Indians, below Wetumpka, a move of great importance, and Fort Tombecbé high up on the Tombigbee was one good result of the unfortunate 1736 war with the Chickasaws. Trade was at the bottom of everything. The Spaniards of Pensacola and Vera Cruz refused all commercial intercourse, and there was little more success with Havana. There was some smuggling, however, and a good deal was accomplished through the buccaneers and freebooters who roved the Gulf. But the Indians needed blankets, guns and ammunition, beads and gewgaws, and could supply furs, skins and provisions. Much could have been done in the way of agriculture, but, beyond introducing figs and raising some vegetables for local use and indigo for export, the colonists accomplished little. They were not of the right kind. At first they were from too high a rank in society to do much manual labor, and after John Law and his Mississippi Bubble exploited the province they were often jail-birds and prostitutes. Starvation faced them every now and then; mutiny was not unknown; and quarrels of priest and commandant, governor and intendant, were going on almost all the time.