For several years after the first quarter of the new century had run out immigrants from the north of Ireland came crowding in, twelve thousand strong by the year. In 1729 quite five thousand of them entered Pennsylvania alone: and they pressed without hesitation and as if by preference to the interior. From Pennsylvania they passed along the broad, inviting valleys southward into the western parts of Virginia. By 1730 a straggling movement of settlers had begun to show itself even upon the distant lands of Kentucky. Still farther south traders from the Carolinas went constantly back and forth between the Indian tribes of the country by the Mississippi and the English settlements at the coast. Nine thousand redskin warriors lay there in the forests. Some traded with the French at the river, some with the English at the coast. They might become foes or allies, might turn to the one side or the other, as passion or interest led them. In 1739 the French at the north put an armed sloop on Champlain. The same year the English built a fortified post at Niagara. Everywhere the two peoples were converging, and were becoming more and more conscious of what their approach to one another meant. So long ago as 1720 orders had come from France bidding the French commanders on the St. Lawrence occupy the valley of the Ohio before the English should get a foothold there. The places where the rivals were to meet it was now easy to see, and every frontiersman saw them very plainly. The two races could not possess the continent together. They must first fight for the nearer waterways of the West, and after that for whatever lay next at hand.