gO THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
territorial acquisitions of the French, their actual 
strength was by no means in proportion, and _ their 
project of confining the English behind the Alleghanies 
was as chimerical as would have been an attempt to 
stop the flow of the St. Lawrence. 
In carrying out their grand project the French relied 
largely upon their alliances with the Indians, and for 
this there was some show of reason. As a general 
thing the French were far more successful than the 
English in winning the favour of the savages. They 
treated them with a firmness and tact very different 
from the disdainful coldness of the English. They 
humoured and cajoled them, even while inspiring them 
with wholesome terror. The haughty and fiery Fron- 
tenac, most punctilious of courtiers, with the bluest 
blood of France flowing in his veins, at the age of 
seventy did not think it beneath his dignity to smear 
his cheeks with vermilion and caper madly about in 
the war-dance, brandishing a tomahawk over his head 
and yelling like a screech-owl or a cougar. Imagine 
Governor Winthrop or Governor Endicott acting such 
a part as this! On the other hand, if an Indian was 
arrested for murdering a Frenchman, he was hanged 
in a trice by martial law, and such summary justice 
the Indians feared and respected. But when an Indian 
was arrested for murdering an Englishman, he was put 
upon his trial, with all the safeguards of the English 
criminal law, and such conscientious clemency the 
Indians despised as sentimental weakness. Captain 
Ecuyer —a Frenchman in the English. service at the 
time of Pontiac’s war — gave an excellent illustration 
of the Frenchman’s native tact in dealing with his red 
brother. Ecuyer was in command of Fort Pitt—whére 
