228 J. G. BOUEINOT 



find the famous sou of Virginia, G-eorge Washington, first entering upon the theatre of 

 national action, and endeavouring to vindicate the claims of his countrymen to that rich 

 region. The astute Duquesne, in furtherance of the plans of his able predecessor, La 

 Galissonuière, built posts at the northwest approaches of the Ohio, and seized the Vir- 

 ginian forts at the forks of the river, where the French erected a fort to which they gave 

 the name of the French governor of the day.' The French and English colonies joined 

 issue in this valley, which formed so necessary an avenue of communication between 

 Canada and Louisiana ; and when the Seven Years' War broke out the French had won 

 the mastery, and their line of communications was complete from the Grulf of Mexico as 

 far as the shores of Acadie and Cape Breton, by means of a chain of forts at points in the 

 MississiiDpi, the Ohio and the St. Lawrence valleys ; in fact, from New Orleans to Louis- 

 bourg.^ 



The French Canadian plans were developed by high statesmanship and carried out 

 with military genius, and had there been enough men in Canada to hold the country 

 and contend against the combined forces of England and her colonies, the dominion of 

 France might have been assured in America. The thirteen colonies might well fear the 

 future, as they saw their security threatened by the posts of France slowly closing around 

 them, shutting them out of the Ohio valley and on the way to confine them to the narrow 

 range of country which they occupied between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies. Hap- 

 pily for the future destiny of the English colonies, Canada was very much inferior in 

 wealth and resources to those countries, and incapable of carrying on a long and exhaust- 

 ive struggle, while France, busy with her ambitious designs in Europe, gave but a 

 meagre support to the men who had dreams of founding a mighty empire in America. 

 When France and England met for the last great strtiggle in America, the thirteen colo- 

 nies had reached a population of nearly a million and a quarter of souls, exclusive of the 

 negroes in the south, while the total number of the people in Canada and Louisiana did 

 not exceed eighty thousand. In wealth and comfort there was the same disproportion 

 between the French and English colonies. The foreign trade of the thirteen colonies in 

 1*753 — that is to saj, of the imports and exports — was estimated at over three million pounds 

 sterling, while the commerce of Canada could not have exceeded half a million of pounds. 

 The combined forces of Canadian militia and regular troops were always much inferior 

 in number to the British and colonial armies when united for the invasion of Canada, 

 with the support of a powerful fleet ; but the great strength of the French colony lay iu 

 the natural barriers between the English colonies and the keys to New France, Quebec 

 and Montreal, and in the skill with which the appi'oaches by way of Lake Champlain 

 had been defended by forts at every important lîoint. If the French force was iusignifi- 



' For an interesting statement of the French posts in America at the time < f the final .strugi;le for the sHjire- 

 macy on tlie continent, .'■oe Hinsdale, " The Old Northwest," i. G-1. 



■^ See Map No. 1 of Northern New France, .showing the position of the French posts and forts from Lonisbourg 

 to the Mississippi and the Ohio, with the dates of their foundation. I am indebted for the main outline* to the 

 map given in Parkman, " Montcalm and Wolfe," vol. i. Hinsdale has also a map (vol. i, frontispiece) giving dates 

 efforts, but they are not quite accurate. For instance, the date of Montreal is given at IGU, whereas M. do Mai- 

 sonneuve founded Ville Marie in 1G42. (See Faillon, " Histoire de la Colonie Françuise on Canada," i. 439 H seg.) 

 No doubt Mr. Hinsdale has been misled by the fact that Champlain in IGU commenced a clearing on the island of 

 Montreal at a point called La Place Royale, but nothing came of his .scheme of making an estalilishmont there. 

 It was on the same spot that Maisonneuve erected the first fort for the protection and shelter of his Utile colony. 

 (Faillon, i. 124-132.) But that does not give Champlain any valid claim to be the founder of Ville Marie. 



