gland and France, who had long been
rivals in the Old World, had become equally bitter rivals on this side
of the Atlantic. On the west, the thirteen English colonies were walled
in by the Allegheny Mountains, beyond which none of the settlers had
advanced. All the country lying between these mountains and the
Mississippi was claimed by France, who was pushing southward through it,
and had given it the name of New France or Louisiana. The first French
settlement within the northwestern part of our country was the mission
of St. Mary, near Sault Ste. Marie, now in the State of Michigan, it
having been established in 1668. Several others of minor importance were
planted at different points.

England did not oppose the acquirement of Canada by the French early in
the seventeenth century, but no serious attempt was made by that people
to colonize the territory within the United States until 1699, when
D'Iberville crossed the Gulf of Mexico in quest of the mouth of the
Mississippi. When he found it, he planted a settlement at Biloxi, now in
Mississippi, but removed it in 1702 to Mobile. The Mississippi Company,
a French organization, obtained in 1716 a grant of Louisiana, and in
1718 sent out a colony that began the settlement of New Orleans.

It will thus be seen that by 1750 the French had acquired large
possessions in North America. They were, determined to hold them, and,
to do so, established a chain of sixty forts reaching from Montreal to
the Gulf of Mexico. These forts were the foundations of many important
cities of to-day, such as New Orleans, Natchez, Detroit, Vincennes,
Toledo, Fort Wayne, Ogdensburg, and Montreal. To the rear of the main
chain of forts were others like Mackinaw, Peoria, and Kaskaskia.

Extensive as was the territory thus taken possession of by the French,
they were fatally weak because of their scant population, amounting to
less than 150,000 souls, while the English colonies had grown to
1,500,000. The French traders were just about strong enough to hold the
Indians in check, but no more.

Thus with the French on the west and the English on the east of the
Alleghanies, the two rival forces were slowly creeping toward each
other, and were bound soon to meet, when the supreme struggle for
possession of the North American continent would open. By-and-by, the
French hunters and traders, as they climbed the western slope of the
mountains, met the English trappers moving in their direction. Being