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FLEUR DE LYS
River to the west of our fort. All the coastal waters are shallow in that direction as far as five leagues out.
/ We found a bay one league wide and four leagues in circumference, forming a halFcircle. We named it Baye de St. Louis 33 because it was on St. Louis’ Day that we came there. This bay is eight leagues west of Fort Biloxi^ We went ashore there ancl found such a great quantity of game of all kinds of animals that we killed more than fifty wild animals, [as many buffalo as deer; we made no attempt to kill more].34 After three days we left that place, and three leagues away we found a creek up which the tide ascencIsTThe savages who were guiding us led us to believe""that this creek went into a big lake; but, as we were not sure of their words, we made signs to them that we wanted to go on. Two leagues from there we found, at a quarter of a league from the seashore, a pass or small island called Passe-aux-Herons35 on account of the great quantity of herons found there. We quit the sea on our left, and three-leagues inland we reached an island that we named Isle-aux-Pois 30 because a sack of peas was left behind there. We departed one hour before daybreak,
33	St. Louis Bay, Mississippi.
34	Tliis passage, dropped from the Clermont manuscript copy and from Margry, Dccouvcrtes, V, 584, is supplied from the Francis Parkman manuscript, p. 2j:
. . tant boeufs sauvages que chevreuils; nous n’en voulumes pas tucr davantage.”
35	This name survives, on the charts I have seen, only in Heron Bay and Heron Bay Point, fifteen miles west of St. Louis Bay. The main pass, between Heron Bay and Grassy Island, is now callcd Grand Island Pass.
30 Or Pea Island, neither showing on modern maps. A comparison of the I. aux Pois on H. Moll’s "A New Map of the North Parts of America Claimed by France, 1720” and on Guillaume Delisle’s "Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi,” 1718, with Pearl River Island on a detailed modern map shows that Isle-aux-Pois, which was south of the cast branch of Pearl River, is Pearl River Island, or the cast part of it. The name Isle-aux-Pois survives in Bayou Isle aux Pois, which connects with Fast Pearl River elose to Baldwin Lodge. Doubtless the coast line has changcd greatly in 225 years. I can offer no more than a reckoning.
AND CALUMET
which was contrary to our usual procedure, in order to
avoid the stinging of an infinity of little flies or gnats that
the savages call niaringouim,31 which bite till the blood n f^/^r
comes. Tl)e creek}that we had met with flows by that '
place; anq a qtrarter.of a league farther on, we found
Fig lake which M. de Bienville named Lake Pont-
chartrain. This lake is twenty-eight leagues in circum- 7-
ference and seven across. Its embouchure at the entrance
is a quarter of a league across from right to left, and both
sides of this ektrance are covered with shells in such great
quantities that they form banks; accordingly it was given
the name Pointe-aux-Coquilles.38 After one enters this
watercourse and sails upward for a league and a half from
the entrance, he finds on his left a poijitxalled Pointe-aux-
Hcrbcs; :u) here we sheltered o\ir longboats) because this
lake is so shallow that boats are always being lost here in
rough weather. Six leagues farther up the lake, a small
river flows into it which is called, in savage, Choupit-
catcha; 40 the French call it today Riviere d’Orleans be-
37	A South American Indian word for mosquito. Father Du Poisson, a Jesuit slain in the Natchez massacre, has left a memorable comment on the maringouins along the Mississippi: "Since the French have been on the Mississippi, this little beast has caused more cursing than had been done in the rest of the world up to that time.”
Translated from the French quoted by McDermott, Glossary, p. 100.
38	Contemporary French maps, by D'Anville and Delisle, show that the whole shore of Lake Pontchartrain from Chef Menteur Pass to West Rigolets, and the south shore of the Rigolets, were callcd Lcs Coquiiles (the Shells). I believe that Pointe-aux-Coquilles was the name given to the spit of land between Lake St.
Catherine and Lake Pontchartrain, ending in a point at West Rigolets. Between that point and Chef Menteur Pass there is still a Shell Point Bayou, on this spit. See “Lake Borne and Approaches," U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, No. 1268 (1949).
89 Point aux Hcrbes, in Orleans Parish, juts prominently out into Lake Pontchartrain from the south shore.
40	Also spelled Soupicatcha. This bayou has been successively callcd Riviere d’Orleans and Bayou St. John., Professor William A. Read gives Choupicatcha as derived from Choctaw sbupik, “grindle or mudfish/* and hacba, "river.” Louisiana Place-Ndmrs of Indian Origin (Baton Rouge, 1927), pp. 24—2;.
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