" [Footnote: Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," 1:3.]
We must stop for a moment to look at this lithe young English colonist,
twenty-one years of age, standing on the nearest edge of the French
explorations and claims and the farthest verge of English adventure, on
the watershed twenty miles from Lake Erie, and requesting, in the name of
Governor Dinwiddie and of the shade of John Cabot, the peaceable departure
of those French pioneers and soldiers, who, as the letter which the young
colonel bore stated, were "erecting fortresses and making settlements upon
the the river [Ohio] so notoriously known to be the property of the Crown
of Great Britain."
The edge of the Great Lakes' basin is only a little way, at the place
where he stood, from the watershed of the Mississippi River. A little
farther up the shore, where Celoron made portage, it is only six or eight
miles across, and here it is but a little more, and the "height of land"
is hardly noticeable. The French built a fort on a promontory in the lake
--a promontory almost an island--Presque Isle; and there, where the waters
begin to run the other way, that is, toward the gulf, they built still
another which they called Le Boeuf, an easier portage than the Chautauqua.
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