ts.

[Sidenote: French aggression.]

As yet therefore there was nothing to break the good will which the
colonists felt towards the mother country, while the danger of French
aggression drew them closely to it. Populous as they had become, English
settlements still lay mainly along the seaboard of the Atlantic; for
only a few exploring parties had penetrated into the Alleghanies before
the Seven Years' War; and Indian tribes wandered unquestioned along the
lakes. It was not till the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 that the
pretensions of France drew the eyes of the colonists and of English
statesmen to the interior of the Western continent. Planted firmly in
Louisiana and Canada, France openly claimed the whole country west of
the Alleghanies as its own, and its governors now ordered all English
settlers or merchants to be driven from the valleys of Ohio or
Mississippi which were still in the hands of Indian tribes. Even the
inactive Pelham revolted against pretensions such as these; and the Duke
of Bedford, who was then Secretary for the Southern Department, was
stirred to energetic action. The original French settlers were driven
from Acadia or Nova Scotia, and an English colony planted there, whose
settlement of Halifax still bears the name of its founder Lord Halifax,
the head of the Board of Trade. An Ohio Company was formed, and its
agents made their way to the valleys of that river and the Kentucky;
while envoys from Virginia and Pennsylvania drew closer the alliance
between their colonies and the Indian tribes across the mountains. Nor
were the French slow to accept the challenge. Fighting began in Acadia.
A vessel of war appeared in Ontario, and Niagara was turned into a fort.
A force of 1200 men despatched to Erie drove the few English settlers
from their little colony on the fork of the Ohio, and founded there a
fort called Duquesne, on the site of the later Pittsburg. The fort at
once gave this force command of the river valley. After a fruitless
attack on it under George Washington, a young Virginian, who had been
despatched with a handful of men to meet the danger, the colonists were
forced to withdraw over the mountains, and the whole of the west was
left in the hands of France.

[Sidenote: Rout of Braddock.]

It was natural that at such a crisis the mother country should look to
the united efforts of the colonies, and Halifax pressed for a joint
arrangement which should provide a standing force and