Sauvolle died August 22,1701, and Louisiana remained under the sole charge of Bienville, who, though very young, was fully equal to meet that emergency, by the maturity of his mind and by his other qualifications. He had hardly consigned his brother to the tomb when Iberville returned with two ships of the line and a brig laden with troops and provisions. According to Iberville's orders, and in conformity with the King's instructions, Bienville left Boisbriant, his cousin, with twenty men, at the old fort of Biloxi, and transported the principal seat of the colony to the western side of the river Mobile, not far from the spot where now stands the city of Mobile. Near the mouth of that river there is an island, which the French had called Massacre Island from the great quantity of human bones which they found bleaching on its shores. It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, and answered not. This uncertainty, giving a free scope to the imagination, shrouded the place with a higher degree of horror and with a deeper hue of fantastical gloom. It looked like the favorite ballroom of the witches of hell. The wind sighed so mournfully through the shrivelled-up pines, those vampire heads seemed incessantly to bow to some invisible and grisly visitors: the footsteps of the stranger emitted such an awful and supernatural sound, when trampling on the skulls which strewed his path, that it was impossible for the coldest imagination not to labor under some crude and ill-defined apprehension. Verily, the weird sisters could not have chosen a fitter abode. Nevertheless, the French, supported by their mercurial temperament, were not deterred from forming an establishment on that sepulchral island, which, they thought, afforded some facilities for their transatlantic communications. In 1703 war had broken out between Great Britain, France, and Spain; and Iberville, a distinguished officer of the French navy, was engaged in expeditions that kept him away from the colony. It did not cease, however, to occupy his thoughts, and had become clothed, in his eye, with a sort of family interest. Louisiana was thus left, for some time, to her scanty resources; but, weak as she was, she gave early proofs of that generous spirit which has ever since animated her; and on the towns of Pensacola and St. Augustine, then in possession of the Spaniards, being threatened with an invasion by the English of South Carolina, she sent to her neighbors what help she could in men, ammunition, and supplies of all sorts. It was the more meritorious as it was the _obolus_ of the poor!