72 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
be enforced, and at that time the power of the Indians 
had not yet ceased to be formidable. 
In contrast with this immense domain, the strip of 
English settlements along the Atlantic coast would 
have seemed quite narrow and insignificant. In New 
York the frontier was at Johnson Hall, not far from 
Schenectady; in Pennsylvania it was at Carlisle; 
farther south the advance from the coast toward the 
interior had been even less considerable. Moreover, 
as far as military purposes were concerned, these colo- 
nies would seem to have been as badly organized as 
possible. Divided into thirteen distinct and indepen- 
dent governments, owning a varying and ill-defined 
allegiance to the British crown, it was next to impos- 
sible to secure concerted military action among them. 
Even in any single colony the raising of troops re- 
quired so much discussion in the legislature, and so 
much wrangling over local or sectarian interests, that 
the assailant was as likely as not to have delivered his 
blow and got off scot-free before any force was in 
readiness to thwart or punish him. Besides this, the 
English colonists were preéminently a peace-loving peo- 
ple, occupied almost entirely with their own domestic 
affairs; they had as little as possible to do with the 
Indians, and for the present, at least, had no far-reach- 
ing designs upon the interior of the continent: whereas 
the French, on the other hand, had a perfectly well- 
defined military policy, and bent all their energies 
toward maintaining and consolidating the supremacy 
over the country which they seemed already to have 
acquired. 
Nevertheless, within eight years from the time we 
have taken for our survey, the French did not possess 
