the two leading powers
of Europe, and the colonial struggle between England and France began.

[Sidenote: French Encroachments.]

The French claimed the right of erecting a chain of fortresses along
the Ohio and the Mississippi, with a view to connect Canada with
Louisiana, and thus obtain a monopoly of the fur trade with the
Indians, and secure the possession of the finest part of the American
continent. But these designs were displeasing to the English
colonists, who had already extended their settlements far into the
interior. The English ministry was also indignant in view of these
movements, by which the colonies were completely surrounded by
military posts. England protested; but the French artfully protracted
negotiations until the fortifications were completed.

It was to protest against the erection of these fortresses that George
Washington, then twenty-three years of age, was sent by the colony of
Virginia to the banks of the Ohio. That journey through the trackless
wilderness, attended but by one person, in no slight degree marked him
out, and prepared him for his subsequently great career.

While the disputes about the forts were carried on between the
cabinets of France and England, the French prosecuted their
encroachments in America with great boldness, which doubtless hastened
the rupture between the two countries. Orders were sent to the
colonies to drive the French from their usurpations in Nova Scotia,
and from their fortified posts upon the Ohio. Then commenced that
great war, which resulted in the loss of the French possessions in
America. But this war was also allied with the contests which grew out
of the Austrian Succession, and therefore will be presented in a
separate chapter on the Pelham administration, during which the Seven
Years' War, in the latter years of the reign of George II., commenced.

[Sidenote: European Settlements in the East.]

But the colonial jealousy between England and France existed not
merely in view of the North American colonies, but also those in the
East Indies; and these must be alluded to in order to form a general
idea of European colonization, and of the causes which led to the
mercantile importance of Great Britain, as well as to the great wars
which desolated the various European nations.

From the difficulties in the American colonies, we turn to those,
therefore, which existed in the opposite quarter of the globe. Even to
those old countries had Euro