In July, 1749, the French re-entered their fortress; and in the same year a large body of settlers was sent out by the British Government to Chebucto harbour, where the city of Halifax was founded. The settlement was designed to be a rival to Louisbourg. Its foundation was evidence that the Imperial Government was at length not wholly indifferent to the value of Acadia; and Halifax is almost unique, among English cities in America, in having owed its origin to the direct action of the State. But no founding of new townships, we may well imagine, could compensate the New Englanders for losing the fruits of their victory. It is said that the first answer of King George II, when pressed to give back Louisbourg to France was that it belonged not to him but to the people of Boston. If these were his words, he spoke truly; the Massachusetts men had won the town, and England gave it away. Yet on no other terms could peace be secured; and it is not easy to pass a fair criticism on the transaction. Then, as now, England had to reckon with conflicting interests within her Empire. Then, as now, she had self-governing colonies which necessarily did not see eye to eye on all points with the mother country. The horizon of New England was bounded by the Atlantic, and the fate of a factory in the East Indies, or even international arrangements on the continent of Europe, were beyond the colonists' ken. They saw only that their blood and their money had been given in vain, and that the fortress, which they had wrested from France, was hers again. English statesmen, on the other hand, looked east as well as west; and near home, across the Channel, was the spectacle of campaigns that brought more loss than gain. As successful war in Europe had given Acadia to the English, so want of success in the {211} same quarter reacted on America. The account was made up, the balance was struck, and the retrocession of Louisbourg was the price of peace. But it was a heavy price to pay, for it seemed to have been paid by the American colonists alone; and, had not another war soon followed, and Louisbourg been again taken by a general whom the Americans loved, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle might have passed into history as not merely a disappointment but an irretrievable disaster. [Sidenote: _Western discovery._] French exploration in North America followed, as has been seen, the line of the lakes and the rivers. From Louisiana, in the first half of the eighteenth century, various expeditions were made in a westerly direction--up the Red River, the Arkansas, the Missouri, and its tributary the Kansas river--the object of the French explorers being to enter into friendly relations with the Comanches and other Indians of the western plains, and gradually to open up trade with New Mexico and the city of Santa Fé; in other words, to reach Spanish America, an object which did not commend itself to Spain. [Sidenote: _Knowledge gained of Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg._]