Like De Soto, La Salle proved only a forerunner in history. The brilliant scheme he conceived and failed to execute was carried to success ten years after his death by Iberville. He discovered the river from the Gulf, and, entering it, explored its course until he identified it as the river discovered from the Lakes by La Salle. And he it was who selected the site for the future city upon the Mississippi, the possession of which meant, to any power that held it, domination of the Gulf of Mexico and of the great waterway, the life artery of the American continent. When Iberville selected that site upon the narrow neck of land lying between the river and an equally navigable chain of lakes, he wrote the history of his city in advance. The first year of the eighteenth century saw France indeed mistress of the Mississippi and of the Gulf of Mexico, but Iberville, like De Soto and La Salle, was cut off in the prime of life and activity, and his work was left to another for accomplishment--to Bienville, his young brother. One cannot think of New Orleans without Bienville, nor of Bienville without New Orleans. From the time he came into the country, a mere stripling, midshipman to Iberville, until he left it, a middle-aged man, the city upon the Mississippi was the star by which he guided all his hopes and ambitions, all his colonial ventures. For eighteen years, during which the seat of government was shifted from Biloxi to Mobile and from Mobile back again to Biloxi, through changes of king and ministry, and through all the personal political vicissitudes of an official dependant of those troublous times, he never ceased to urge upon the home authorities the founding of the city, all the while setting aside with unwearied patience the baffling objections against it in his own council-boards. His opportunity came at last, in 1718, when Louisiana was made over by contract to John Law and the Company of the West; then, as Governor, he had full authority to act with men and money at his disposal. He himself brought his axemen to the spot, saw the land cleared and laid off in lots, according to the map prepared by the royal engineers. A handsome little city it was to be according to this map; with fair, square sides, straight streets; with a _place d’armes_, parish church, cemetery, barracks; all complete, even to the naming of the streets--Chartres, Condé, Royal, Bourbon, Dauphine, Burgundy, Conti, St. Louis, Toulouse, St. Peter, Orleans, St. Anne. No nicknames were to be allowed here to chance and illiteracy, no plebeian “Broads,” “Mains,” “Highs”--a right royal little city it was designed to be from the first, and one worthy its princely godfather, Law’s patron, the Duke of Orleans.