Note 5 — Chapter I

"While Britain claimed an indefinite extent to the west, France insisted on confining her to the eastern side of the Allegany Mountains, and claimed the whole country whose waters run into the Mississippi, in virtue of her right as the first discoverer of that river. The delightful region between the summit of those mountains and the Mississippi was the object for which these two powerful nations contended, and it soon became apparent that the sword alone could decide the contest."—Marshall's Life of Washington, vol. i., p. 294; Belsham, vol. ii., p. 363, 364.

"Thus France would have enjoyed, in time of peace, the whole Indian trade, and the English colonies, in time of war, must have had a frontier of 1200 miles to defend against blood-thirsty savages, conducted by French officers, and supported by regular troops. It was, in fact, to attempt the extinction of the British settlements, and yet, without such interior communication as was projected between Canada and Louisiana, the French settlements on the St. Lawrence and Mississippi could never, it was said, attain any high degree of consequence or security; the navigation of one of those rivers being at all seasons difficult, and that of the other blocked up with ice during the winter months, so as to preclude exterior support or relief. This scheme of usurpation, which is supposed to have long occupied the deliberations of the court of Versailles, was ardently embraced by M. de la Jonquière, now commander-in-chief of the French forces in North America, and by La Galissonière, a man of a bold and enterprising spirit, who had been appointed governor of New France in 1747. By their joint efforts, in addition to those of their predecessors, forts were erected along the Great Lakes, which communicate with the River St. Lawrence, and also on the Ohio and Mississippi. The vast chain was almost completed from Quebec to New Orleans, when the court of England, roused by repeated injuries, broke off the conferences relative to the limits of Nova Scotia."—Russell's Modern Europe, vol. iii., p. 273.