tween France and
England for supremacy in North America.

Upon the wall behind the vice-regal chair hung a great map, drawn by
the bold hand of Abbe Piquet, representing the claims as well as actual
possessions of France in America. A broad, red line, beginning in
Acadia, traversed the map westerly, taking in Lake Ontario and running
southerly along the crests and ridges of the Appalachian Mountains.
It was traced with a firm hand down to far-off Louisiana, claiming for
France the great valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the vast
territories watered by the Missouri and the Colorado--thus hemming the
English in between the walls of the Appalachian range on the west and
the seacoast on the east.

The Abbe Piquet had lately, in a canoe, descended the Belle Riviere,
as the voyageurs called the noble Ohio. From its source to its junction
with the solitary Mississippi the Abbe had planted upon its conspicuous
bluffs the ensigns of France, with tablets of lead bearing the
fleur-de-lis and the proud inscription, "Manibus date lilia
plenis,"--lilies destined, after a fierce struggle for empire, to be
trampled into the earth by the feet of the victorious English.

The Abbe, deeply impressed with the dangers that impended over the
Colony, labored zealously to unite the Indian nations in a general
alliance with France. He had already brought the powerful Algonquins
and Nipissings into his scheme, and planted them at Two Mountains as
a bulwark to protect the city of Ville Marie. He had created a great
schism in the powerful confederacy of the Five Nations by adroitly
fanning into a flame their jealousy of English encroachments upon their
ancient territory on Lake Ontario; and bands of Iroquois had, not long
since, held conference with the Governor of New France, denouncing the
English for disregarding their exclusive right to their own country.
"The lands we possess," said they at a great council in Ville Marie,
"the lands we possess were given to us by the Master of Life, and we
acknowledge to hold of no other!"

The Abbe had now strong hopes of perfecting a scheme which he afterwards
accomplished. A powerful body of the Iroquois left their villages and
castles on the Mohawk and Genesee rivers, and under the guidance of the
Abbe settled round the new Fort of La Presentation on the St. Lawrence,
and thus barred that way, for the future, against the destructive
inroads of their countrymen who remained faithful to the Engli