pe Breton, "To restrict those aspiring English Colonies," mere
Ploughers and Traders, hardly numbering above one million, "to the Space
eastward of the Alleghany Mountains," over which they are beginning
to climb, "and southward of that Missiquash, or, at farthest, of the
Penobscot and Kennebunk" (rivers HODIE in the State of Maine). [La
Gallisonniere, Governor of Canada's DESPATCH, "Quebec, 15th January,
1749" (cited in Bancroft,--History of the United States,--Boston, 1839,
et seq.). "The English Inhabitants are computed at 1,051,000; French (in
Canada 45,000, in Louisiana 7,000), in all 52,000:"--History of British
Dominions in North America--(London, 1773), p. 13. Bancroft (i. 154)
counts the English Colonists in "1754 about 1,200,000."] That will be
a very pretty Parallelogram for them and their ploughs and trade-packs:
we, who are 50,000 odd, expert with the rifle far beyond them, will
occupy the rest of the world. Such is the French exuberant notion: and,
October, 1745, before signature at Aix-la-Chapelle, much more before
Delivery of Cape Breton, the Commandant at Detroit (west end of Lake
Erie) had received orders, "To oppose peremptorily every English
Establishment not only thereabouts, but on the Ohio or its tributaries;
by monition first; and then by force, if monition do not serve."

Establishments of any solidity or regularity the English have not in
those parts; beyond the Alleghanies all is desert: "from the Canada
Lakes to the Carolinas, mere hunting-ground of the Six Nations; dotted
with here and there an English trading-house, or adventurous Squatter's
farm:"--to whom now the French are to say: "Home you, instantly; and
leave the Desert alone!" The French have distinct Orders from Court,
and energetically obey the same; the English have indistinct Orders from
Nature, and do not want energy, or mind to obey these: confusions and
collisions are manifold, ubiquitous, continual. Of which the history
would be tiresome to everybody; and need only be indicated here by a
mark or two of the main passages.

In 1749, three things had occurred worth mention. FIRST, Captain Coram,
a public-spirited half-pay gentleman in London, originator of the
Foundling Hospital there, had turned his attention to the fine
capabilities and questionable condition of NOVA SCOTIA, with few
inhabitants, and those mostly disaffected; and, by many efforts now
forgotten, had got the Government persuaded to despatch (June, 1749)
a kind