IMPORTANCE OF FRONTIER POSTS. 237 



had cost her so much treasure and her troops such 

 losses and reverses, during a long period of arduous 

 warfare. 



Oswego, in the same way, had always been a bone 

 of contention, and an object of envy to the French. 

 In 1727, the year after it was first garrisoned by the 

 British, the French governor at Quebec demanded its 

 evacuation on the ground that it was erected on French 

 territory. This being refused it was summoned to sur- 

 render, but the British stubbornly held their ground ; 

 after many threatenings it was however at length 

 captured by Montcalm, Aug. i4th, 1^56, but it was 

 re-occupied by the British again, not long afterwards. 



Though matters political are to a great degree for- 

 eign to the objects of this work, yet the supreme im- 

 portance, in a great forest country above all other 

 places, of firmly maintaining judiciously selected inland 

 frontier posts giving access to extensive systems of 

 water communications opening up the interior of the 

 country, must be evident to all colonizing peoples; 

 that being so therefore, we regard a digression into 

 this subject as not altogether irrelevant to the scope 

 of a work professing to deal with the Wilderness and 

 its Tenants. The policy of the future is reflected in 

 the mirror of the past : it cannot consequently be 

 aught but profitable to take a hasty glance, ere we 

 close this section, at the salient features of the great 

 struggle which arose out of disputes with reference to 

 these matters and other boundary questions, between 

 Great Britain and France, towards the middle of the 

 1 8th century in North America. 



The prize in dispute was a great one ; for the 

 North American forest belt, in this zone, was incom- 



