with the French and their savage allies.

=The Clash in the Ohio Valley.=--The second of these wars had hardly
closed, however, before the English colonists themselves began to be
seriously alarmed about the rapidly expanding French dominion in the
West. Marquette and Joliet, who opened the Lake region, and La Salle,
who in 1682 had gone down the Mississippi to the Gulf, had been followed
by the builders of forts. In 1718, the French founded New Orleans, thus
taking possession of the gateway to the Mississippi as well as the St.
Lawrence. A few years later they built Fort Niagara; in 1731 they
occupied Crown Point; in 1749 they formally announced their dominion
over all the territory drained by the Ohio River. Having asserted this
lofty claim, they set out to make it good by constructing in the years
1752-1754 Fort Le Boeuf near Lake Erie, Fort Venango on the upper
waters of the Allegheny, and Fort Duquesne at the junction of the
streams forming the Ohio. Though they were warned by George Washington,
in the name of the governor of Virginia, to keep out of territory "so
notoriously known to be property of the crown of Great Britain," the
French showed no signs of relinquishing their pretensions.

[Illustration: _From an old print_

BRADDOCK'S RETREAT]

=The Final Phase--the French and Indian War.=--Thus it happened that the
shot which opened the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French
and Indian War, was fired in the wilds of Pennsylvania. There began the
conflict that spread to Europe and even Asia and finally involved
England and Prussia, on the one side, and France, Austria, Spain, and
minor powers on the other. On American soil, the defeat of Braddock in