monopolizing the rich traffic of the Western
lakes. To counteract this design, M. de Beauharnois sent the Baron de
Longueuil to negotiate with the Indians in the neighborhood of Niagara,
for their consent to the erection of a French fort and establishment
upon the banks of their magnificent river, where it enters the waters of
Ontario. After many difficulties in reconciling the jealousy of the
native tribes, the French succeeded in effecting their object. On the
other hand, the men of New York strengthened their defenses at Oswego,
and increased the garrison. Angry communications then passed between the
French and English governors in peremptory demands for its abandonment
by the one, and prompt refusals by the other. Each was well aware of the
importance of the position: it served as a means of diverting nearly all
the Indian trade by Albany and the channel of the Hudson into the
British colonies, and also formed a frontier protection to those
numerous and flourishing settlements which Anglo-Saxon industry and
courage were rapidly forming in the wilderness.

In the vain hope of checking the irrepressible energies of rival
colonization, Beauharnois erected a fort at Crown Point, on Lake
Champlain, commanding its important navigation, and also serving to hold
in terror the settlers on the neighboring banks of the Hudson and
Connecticut. The English remonstrated without effect against this
occupation, and the French remained in peaceable possession of their
establishment. The next war that broke out between the mother countries
spread rapine and destruction over the colonial frontiers, without any
real result beyond mutual injury and embittered hatred. From this fort
at Crown Point, and other posts held by the Canadians, marauding parties
poured upon the British settlements, and destroyed them with horrid
barbarity. A party of French and Indians even penetrated to Saratoga,
within forty miles of Albany, attacked and burned the fort, and slew or
carried into captivity the unhappy defenders.

For many subsequent years the history of Canada is but a chronicle of
the accession of governors and the registration of royal edicts. In
comparison with her southern rivals, the progress in material prosperity
was very slow. Idleness and drunkenness, with all their attendant evils,
were rife to a most injurious extent. The innumerable fetes, or holidays
of the Church, afforded opportunities to the dissolute, and occasioned
frequent i