SIXTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I909 211 



The world owes many debts to France. Not the least of these is 

 the inspiration the men of every race can find in the noble ex- 

 amples of such explorers as Niccolet and Joliet and La Salle ; such 

 leaders as Champlain and Frontenac and Duquesne and Mont- 

 calm; and such missionaries as Le Caron and Breboeuf and Mar- 

 quette. They strove for the execution of a great design, holding 

 hardship and suffering and life of little account in their loyalty to 

 their religion and their king. With infinite pains they won the 

 friendship of the Indians of the St Lawrence and the far North- 

 west; they carried the flag of France to the mouth of the Missis- 

 sippi; they drew a cordon of military posts up the St Lawrence 

 across to the Mississippi and down to the Gulf, well designed to bar 

 the westward advance of the English colonies, to save the great 

 West for their race and thence to press the English backward to 

 the sea. Their soldiers were, as a rule, better led, better organized, 

 and moved on more definite and certain plans than the English. Oc- 

 casionally some born fighter on the English side would accomplish 

 a great deed, like Pepperell at Louisburg, or some man of supreme 

 good sense would bring order out of confusion, as did Franklin 

 and Washington, but as a rule colonial legislatures were slow and 

 vacillating, colonial governors were indifferent and shortsighted, 

 and colonial movements were marked by a lack of that definite re- 

 sponsibihty, coupled with power, so essential to successful warfare. 



Fortunately for England, between the two parties all along the 

 controlling strategic line from this Lake Champlain to the gateway 

 of the West at Fort Duquesne, stretched the barrier of the Long 

 House and its tributary nations. They were always ready, always 

 organized, always watchful. They continually threatened and fre- 

 quently broke the great French military line of communication. 

 Along the whole line they kept the French continually in jeopardy. 

 Before the barrier the French built forts and trained soldiers — be- 

 hind it the English cleared the forests and built homes and cultivated 

 fields and grew to a great multitude, strong in individual freedom 

 and in the practice of self-government. Again and again the French 

 hurled their forces against the Long House, but always with little 

 practical advantage. At one time De Tracy, the Viceroy, burned 

 villages and laid waste the land of the Iroquois with twelve hun- 

 dred French soldiers. At another De La Barre, the Governor, with 

 eighteen hundred ; at another De Nonville with two thousand ; at 

 another Frontenac with six hundred ; at still another, Frontenac 



