Although the entire French population in America, in 1688, was, by their own count, only eleven thousand two hundred and forty-nine, against more than ten times that number of English-speaking colonists, they had ere the close of that century erected mission-houses and trading-posts from the mouth of the Kennebec, in Maine, westward and northward to the Falls of Minnehaha, and southward down the Mississippi, through Louisiana, Texas, and Southern Mississippi. French forts and stockades showed defiant guns at Niagara, Crown Point, Detroit, St. Louis, and along the mud-bearing delta of the river, that La Salle had, first of white men, overcome with a birch canoe. Eastward the adventurous French next advanced along the sinuous shores of the Gulf. In 1702, on the western bank of the Mobile River, and upon the thirsty sand-plain which comes down to drink its waters, Mobile was founded by Bienville. Two years following, an invoice of twenty young French girls was sent out to help the census-taker. The lot suiting well, a second consignment of twenty-three was despatched the next year. These vivacious goods, however, it may be incidentally remarked, rose the following year, in price and self-estimation, and formed what is called “The Petticoat Insurrection,” a rebellion against the limited amount of Indian corn served out during a season of scarcity. But more corn coming out they acknowledged it, and went down in pleased submission and quiet. [Illustration: THE “PETTICOAT INSURRECTION” IN MOBILE IN 1706. (p. 221) ]