n a stone's throw of one another. Nearly
all the vast territory, through which these great waterways flow, then
belonged to France, so far as exploration, discovery and partial
occupation gave her a right to exercise dominion. Only in the great
North, where summer is a season of a very few weeks, where icebergs bar
the way for many months, where the fur-trade and the whale-fishery alone
offered an incentive to capital and enterprise, had England a right to
an indefinite dominion. Here a "Company of Gentlemen-Adventurers
trading into Hudson's Bay" occupied some fortified stations which,
during the seventeenth century, had been seized by the daring
French-Canadian corsair, Iberville, who ranks with the famous
Englishman, Drake. On the Atlantic coast the prosperous English colonies
occupied a narrow range of country bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the
Alleghanies. It was only in the middle of the eighteenth century--nearly
three-quarters of a century after Joliet's and La Salle's explorations,
and even later than the date at which Frenchmen had followed the
Saskatchewan to the Rocky Mountains--that some enterprising Virginians
and Pennsylvanians worked their way into the beautiful country watered
by the affluents of the Ohio. New France may be said to have extended at
that time from Cape Breton or Isle Royale west to the Rocky Mountains,
and from the basin of the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

SECTION 4.--End of French dominion in the valley of the St. Lawrence.

After the treaty of Utrecht, France recognized the mistake she had made
in giving up Acadia, and devoted her attention to the island of Cape
Breton, or Isle Royale, on whose southeastern coast soon rose the
fortifications of Louisbourg. In the course of years this fortress
became a menace to English interests in Acadia and New England. In 1745
the town was taken by a force of New England volunteers, led by General
Pepperrell, a discreet and able colonist, and a small English squadron
under the command of Commodore, afterwards Admiral, Warren, both of whom
were rewarded by the British government for their distinguished services
on this memorable occasion. France, however, appreciated the importance
of Isle Royale, and obtained its restoration in exchange for Madras
which at that time was the most important British settlement in the East
Indies. England then decided to strengthen herself in Acadia, where
France retained her hold of the French Acadian popula