He seems to have been for a time
after La Salle's death his only great-minded follower. He wrote on
reaching Rochelle after his first voyage that "if France does not
immediately seize this part of America, which is the most beautiful, and
establish a colony strong enough to resist any which England may have
here, the English colonies (already considerable in Carolina) will so
thrive that in less than a hundred years they will be strong enough to
seize all America." [Footnote: Margry, _l. c._, IV:322.]
But the answer from Versailles only hastened the fulfilment of Iberville's
prophecy. It is as a page torn from a contemporaneous suburban villa
prospectus that speaks of one of those migratory settlements of Iberville
on the shores of the gulf as a "terrestrial paradise," a "Pomona," or "The
Fortunate Island." And the reality which confronts the home seeker is
usually more nearly true to the idealistic details than that which
Governor Cadillac, wishing no doubt to discredit his predecessor, reported
when he went to succeed Bienville for a time as governor: "I have seen the
garden on Dauphin Island, which had been described to me as a terrestrial
paradise.
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