lake country, and established settlements down the banks of the
St. Lawrence, along which French activity for a long time confined
itself. Between the French and the English settlements roved the
warlike Five Nations of the Iroquois Indians, and Champlain, whose
settlements were in the country of the Algonquins, was obliged
to take their part and make the Iroquois the enemies of France,
which had important effects upon the final struggle between England
and France in the eighteenth century. The French continued their
exploration of the interior of the continent. In 1673 Marquette
discovered the Mississippi (Missi Sepe, "the great water"), and
descended it as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, but the work of
exploring the Mississippi valley was undertaken by Robert de la
Salle. He had already discovered the Ohio and Illinois rivers, and
in three expeditions, between 1680 and 1682, succeeded in working his
way right down to the mouth of the Mississippi, giving to the huge
tract of country which he had thus traversed the name of Louisiana,
after Louis XIV.

France thenceforth claimed the whole _hinterland_, as we should
now call it, of North America, the English being confined to the
comparatively narrow strip of country east of the Alleghanies. New
Orleans was founded at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1716, and
named after the Prince Regent; and French activity ranged between
Quebec and New Orleans, leaving many traces even to the present
day, in French names like Mobile, Detroit, and the like, through
the intervening country. The situation at the commencement of the
eighteenth century was remarkably similar to that of the Gold Coast
in Africa at the end of the nineteenth. The French persistently
attempted to encroach upon the English sphere of influence, and it
was in attempting to define the two spheres that George Washington
learned his first lesson in diplomacy and strategy. The French and
English American colonies were almost perpetually at war with one
another, the objective being the spot where Pittsburg now stands,
which was regarded as the gate of the west, overlooking as it did
the valley of the Ohio. Here Duquesne founded the fort named after
himself, and it was not till 1758 that this was finally wrested
from French hands; while, in the following year, Wolfe, by his
capture of Quebec, overthrew the whole French power in North America.
Throughout the long fight the English had been much assisted by
the gueri