turers had now
demonstrated that while the waters beyond the mountains were not the
Western Ocean, they possibly led to such a sea; and it came to be
recognized, too, that the continent was not as narrow as had up to
this time been supposed.

Meanwhile, the French of Canada were casting eager eyes toward the
Ohio, as a gateway to the continental interior. But the French-hating
Iroquois held fast the upper waters of the Mohawk, Delaware, and
Susquehanna, and the long but narrow watershed sloping northerly to
the Great Lakes, so that the westering Ohio was for many years sealed
to New France. An important factor in American history this, for it
left the great valley practically free from whites while the English
settlements were strengthening on the seaboard; when at last the
French were ready aggressively to enter upon the coveted field, they
had in the English colonists formidable and finally successful rivals.

It is believed by many, and the theory is not unreasonable, that the
great French fur-trader and explorer, La Salle, was at the Falls of
the Ohio (site of Louisville) "in the autumn or early winter of 1669."
How he got there, is another question. Some antiquarians believe
that he reached the Alleghany by way of the Chautauqua portage, and
descended the Ohio to the Falls; others, that he ascended the Maumee
from Lake Erie, and, descending the Wabash, thus, discovered the Ohio.
It was reserved for the geographer Franquelin to give, in his map of
1688, the first fairly-accurate idea of the Ohio's path; and Father
Hennepin's large map of 1697 showed that much had meanwhile been
learned about the river.

No doubt, by this time, the great waterway was well-known to many of
the most adventurous French and English fur-traders, possibly better
to the latter than to the former; unfortunately, these men left few
records behind them, by which to trace their discoveries. As early as
1684, we incidentally hear of the Ohio as a principal route for the
Iroquois, who brought peltries "from the direction of the Illinois" to
the English at Albany, and the French at Quebec. Two years after this,
ten English trading-canoes, loaded with goods, were seen on Lake Erie
by French agents, who in great alarm wrote home to Quebec about them.
Writes De Nonville to Seignelay, "I consider it a matter of importance
to preclude the English from this trade, as they doubtless would
entirely ruin ours--as well by the cheaper bargains they would