the Mississippi at
strategic points stretching northward beyond the mouth of the Missouri
were a few French settlements, ragged enough and with a shiftless
population of fur traders and farmers, but adequate to assert France's
possession of that mighty highway. The weak point in France's position
was in her connection of the Mississippi with the St. Lawrence by way
of the Ohio. This was the place of danger, for here English rivalry was
strongest, and it was to cure this weakness that Celoron was now sent
forth.

Celoron moved toilsomely over the portage which led past the great
cataract of Niagara and launched his canoes on Lake Erie. From its
south shore, during seven days of heart-breaking labor, the party
dragged the canoes and supplies through dense forest and over steep
hills until they reached Chautauqua Lake, the waters of which flow into
the Allegheny River and by it to the Ohio. For many weary days they
went with the current, stopping at Indian villages, treating with the
savages, who were sometimes awed and sometimes menacing. They warned
the Indians to have no dealings with the scheming English who would
"infallibly prove to be robbers," and asserted as boldly as Celoron
dared the lordship of the King of France and his love for his forest
children. Celoron realized that he was on an historic mission. At
several points on the Ohio, with great ceremony, he buried leaden
plates, as La Verendrye had done a few years earlier in the far West,
bearing an inscription declaring that, in the name of the King of
France, he took possession of the country. On trees over these memorials
of lead he nailed the arms of France, stamped on sheets of tin. Since
that day at least three of the plates have been found.

Celoron's expedition went well enough. He advanced as far west on the
Ohio as the mouth of the Great Miami River, then up that river, and by
difficult portages back to Lake Erie. It was a remarkable journey; but
in the late autumn he was back again in Montreal, not sure that he had
achieved much. The natives of the country were, he thought, hostile to
France and devoted to the English who had long traded with them. This
opinion was in truth erroneous, for, when the time of testing came,
the Indians of the West fought on the side of France. Montcalm had many
hundreds of them under his banner. The expedition meant the definite and
final throwing down of the gauntlet by France. With all due ceremony
she had declared