fastnesses. Pontiac failed to capture
Detroit, and Bouquet followed up his first success by a direct march
into the country of the Shawnees, Mingoes and Delawares, and forced them
to agree to stern conditions of peace on the banks of the Muskingum. The
power of the western Indians was broken for the time, and the British in
1765 took possession of the French forts of Chartres and Vincennes, when
the _fleur-de-lys_ disappeared for ever from the valley of the
Mississippi. The French settlers on the Illinois and the Mississippi
preferred to remain under British rule rather than cross the great river
and become subjects of Spain, to whom Western Louisiana had been ceded
by France. From this time forward France ceased to be an influential
factor in the affairs of Canada or New France, and the Indian tribes
recognized the fact that they could no longer expect any favour or aid
from their old ally. They therefore transferred their friendship to
England, whose power they had felt in the Ohio valley, and whose policy
was now framed with a special regard to their just treatment.

This Indian war was still in progress when King George III issued his
proclamation for the temporary government of his new dependencies in
North America. As a matter of fact, though the proclamation was issued
in England on the 7th October, 1763, it did not reach Canada and come
into effect until the 10th August, 1764. The four governments of Quebec,
Grenada, East Florida, and West Florida were established in the
territories ceded by France and Spain. The eastern limit of the province
of Quebec did not extend beyond St. John's River at the mouth of the St.
Lawrence, nearly opposite to Anticosti, while that island itself and the
Labrador country, east of the St. John's as far as the Straits of
Hudson, were placed under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland. The islands
of Cape Breton and St. John, now Prince Edward, became subject to the
Government of Nova Scotia, which then included the present province of
New Brunswick. The northern limit of the province did not extend beyond
the territory known as Rupert's Land under the charter given to the
Hudson's Bay Company in 1670, while the western boundary was drawn
obliquely from Lake Nipissing as far as Lake St. Francis on the St.
Lawrence; the southern boundary then followed line 45 deg. across the upper
part of Lake Champlain, whence it passed along the highlands which
divide the rivers that empty themselves int