then were the prohibitions of the treaty void, so far as they circumscribed the operations of the French or defined the boundaries of their possessions. interpretation, the

French

Availing themselves of this

forstalled the English

by securing from the Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas^and Qneidas, the declara tion already quoted that they were independent tribes, and re

sumed the prosecution of the policy, which they had inaugurated as early as 1731, of connecting the St. Lawrence with the gulf of Mexico by a chain of forts along that river to Detroit and

While the English were in regard to the Nova Scotia peninsula, La them with disputing

down the Ohio to the Mississippi.

Galissoniere was sent out, in 1749, with three hundred

men to

trace and occupy the Ohio valley, and faithfully did he perform his work.

At the mouth of every principal river plates of lead

CXF HUDSON'S

RIVER.

were deposited in the soil bearing the the farthest ridge

inscription,

that,

from

whence water trickled towards the Ohio, the

and the lilies of the Bourbons were nailed to forest trees in token of possession. 1 The determination of the French reopened the original con The establishment of the contemplated forts was troversy. Not only would with fraught danger to the English colonies. country belonged to France,

they cut off the western Indian trade, but would build up a power behind the English settlements which would be to them a perpetual menace, even if it did not involve their very exist

ence as subjects of Great Britain.