Permission was readily given, and in 1698 Iberville sailed with two ships from France, and in February, 1699, entered Mobile Bay.

Leaving his fleet at anchor, he set off with a party in small boats in search of the great river.

He coasted along the shore, entered the Mississippi through one of its three mouths, and went up the river till he came to an Indian village, where the chief gave him a letter which Tonty, thirteen years before, when in search of La Salle, had written and left in the crotch of a tree.
Iberville now knew that he was on the Mississippi; but having seen no spot along its low banks suitable for the site of a city, he went back and led his colony to Biloxi Bay, and there settled it.

Thus when the eighteenth century opened there were in all Louisiana but two French settlements--that founded on the Illinois River by La Salle, and that begun by Iberville at Biloxi.

But the occupation of Louisiana was now the established policy of France, and hardly a year went by without one or more forts appearing somewhere in the valley.