Le Sueur explored the upper Mississippi in search of mines. In 1700 Bienville and Saint-Denys scoured the Red River country in search of Spaniards, but saw none. In 1701 Saint-Denys was gone for six months on a trip to the same region, with the same result.[40] The records of these expeditions and the Relations of the fathers have preserved for us a knowledge of the country as it then was, and of the various tribes which then inhabited the Valley of the Mississippi. From them we obtain descriptions of the curious temples of the Natchez and Taensas; of the perpetual fire preserved in them; of the custom of offering as a sacrifice the first-fruits of the chase and the field; of the arbitrary despotism of their grand chief, or Sun; of the curious hereditary aristocracy transmitted through the female Suns;[41] of the strange custom of sacrificing human lives on the death of a Grand Sun. To be selected to accompany the chief to the other world was a privilege as well as a duty; to avoid its performance when through ties of blood or from other cause the selection was involuntary, was a disgrace and a dishonor. We find records of the presence of no less than four of the Le Moyne brothers,—Iberville, Bienville, Sérigny, and Chateauguay. Iberville was rewarded in 1699 by appointment as chevalier of the Order of St. Louis; in 1702 by promotion to the position of _capitaine de vaisseau_; and in 1703 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the colony, which Pontchartrain in his official announcement calls “the colony of Mississippi.” These honors did not quite meet his expectations. He wanted a concession, with the title of count; the privilege of sending a ship to Guinea for negroes; a lead mine; in short, he wanted a number of things. He bore within his frame the seeds of disease contracted in the south; and in 1706, while employed upon a naval expedition against the English, he succumbed at Havana to an attack of yellow fever. With him departed much of the life and hope of the colony. Supplies, which during his life had never been abundant, were now sure to be scarce; and we begin to find in the records of the colony the monotonous, reiterated complaints of scarcity of provisions. These wails are occasionally relieved by accounts of courtesies exchanged with the Spanish settlements at Pensacola and St. Augustine. The war of the Spanish Succession had brought Spain and France close together. The Spanish forts stood in the pathway of the English and protected Biloxi. When the Spanish commander called for help, Bienville responded with men and ammunition; and when starvation fairly stared the struggling Spanish settlement in the face, he shared with them his scant food. They in turn reciprocated, and a regular debit and credit account of these favors was kept, which was occasionally adjusted by commissioners thereto duly appointed. So few were the materials of which histories are ordinarily composed, during these years of torpor and inaction,