s, as tokens of French sovereignty over these forests and these
waters. Being a Frenchman, and therefore perhaps inclined to gayety, he
might have been happy if he could have foreseen that in a coming age,
the most elaborate amusement park on the border of Tchadakoin (as he
spelled it on his leaden plates) would hand down the name of Celoron to
generations then unborn!

[Illustration: Steamer in the Outlet]

In order to make the French domination of this important waterway sure,
Governor Duquesne of Canada sent across Lake Erie an expedition, landing
at Barcelona, to build a rough wagon-road over the portage to Lake
Chautauqua. Traces of this "old French road" may still be seen. Those
French surveyors and toilers little dreamed that in seven years their
work would become an English thoroughfare, and their empire in the new
world would be exploited by the descendants of the Puritan and Huguenot!

During the American Revolution, the Seneca tribe of Indians, who had
espoused the British side, established villages at Bemus and Griffiths
points on Lake Chautauqua; and a famous British regiment, "The King's
Eighth," still on the rolls of the British army, passed down the lake,
and encamped for a time beside the Outlet within the present limits of
Jamestown. Thus the redskin, the voyageur, and the redcoat in turn
dipped their paddles into the placid waters of Lake Chautauqua. They all
passed away, and the American frontiersman took their place; he too was
followed by the farmer and the vinedresser. In the last half of the
nineteenth century a thriving town, Mayville, was growing at the
northern end of the lake; the city of Jamestown was rising at the end of
the Outlet; while here and there along the shores were villages and
hamlets; roads, such as they were before the automobile compelled their
improvement, threaded the forests and fields. A region situated on the
direct line of travel between the east and the west, and also having
Buffalo on the north and Pittsburgh on the south, could not long remain
secluded. Soon the whistle of the locomotive began to wake the echoes of
the surrounding hills.

In its general direction the lake lies southeast and northwest, and its
widest part is about three miles south of Mayville. Here on its
northwestern shore a wide peninsula reaches forth into the water. At the
point it is a level plain, covered with stately trees; on the land side
it rises in a series of natural terraces marking th