With the return of Iberville to France, in the spring of 1700, the romantic interest which has attached to his person while engaged in these preliminary explorations ceases, and we no longer watch his movements with the same care. His third voyage, which occupied from the fall of 1701 to the summer of 1702, was devoid of interest. On this occasion he anchored his fleet at Pensacola, proceeding afterward with one of his vessels to Mobile. A period of inaction in the affairs of the colony follows, coincident with the war of the Spanish Succession, during which the settlement languished, and its history can be told in few words. Free transportation from France to Louisiana was granted to a few unfortunate women and children, relatives of colonists. Some Canadians with Indian wives came down the river with their families. Thus a semblance of a settlement was formed. Bienville succeeded to the command, death having removed Sauvolle from his misery in the fall of 1701. The vitality of the wretched troops was almost equally sapped, whether stationed at the fort on the spongy foothold by the river side, or on the glaring sands of the gently sloping beach at Biloxi. Fishing, hunting, searching for pearls, and fitting out expeditions to discover imaginary mines occupied the time and the thoughts of the miserable colonists; while the sages across the water still pressed upon their attention the possibility of developing the trade in buffalo-wool, on which they built their hopes of the future of the colony. Agriculture was totally neglected; but hunting-parties and embassies to Indians explored the region now covered by the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. [Illustration: ENVIRONS DU MISSISSIPI, 1700. [This is figure 3 of plate i. in R. Thomassy’s _Géologie pratique de la Louisiane_ (1860), called “Carte des environs du Mississipi (envoyée à Paris en 1700).” He describes it (p. 208) as belonging to the Archives Scientifiques, and thinks it a good record of the topography as Iberville understood it. The material of this map and of another, likewise preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, are held by Thomassy (p. 209) to have been unskilfully combined by M. de Fer in his _Les Costes aux environs de la Rivière de Misisipi_, 1701. Thomassy also noted (p. 215) in the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine, and found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, a copy of a map by Le Blond de la Tour of the mouths of the Mississippi in 1722, _Entrée du Mississipi en 1722, avec un projet de fort_, of which Thomassy gives a reproduction (pl. iii. fig. 1), and he considers it a map of the first importance in tracing the changes which the river has made in its bed. He next notes and depicts (pl. iii. fig. 2) a _Plan particulier de l’embouchure du fleuve Saint-Louis_, which was drawn at New Orleans, May 29, 1724, and is signed “De Pauger, Royal Engineer.” It assists one in tracing the early changes, being on the same scale as La Tour’s map.—ED.]]