As early as 1651, Parliament passed the first of the oppressive Navigation Acts, which forbade the colonies to trade with any other country than England, or to receive foreign ships into their ports. This act was so harsh and unjust that it was never generally enforced, until the attempt, more than a century later, when it became one of the leading causes of the American Revolution. [Illustration: EARLY DAYS IN NEW ENGLAND.] [Illustration: PLACES OF WORSHIP IN NEW YORK IN 1742. 1. Lutheran. 2. French. 3. Trinity. 4. New Dutch. 5. Old Dutch. 6. Presbyterian. 7. Baptist. 8. Quaker. 9. Synagogue.] CHAPTER III. THE INTERCOLONIAL WARS AND THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR. King William's War--Queen Anne's War--King George's War--The French and Indian War--England and France Rivals in the Old World and the New--The Early French Settlements--The Disputed Territory--France's Fatal Weakness--Washington's Journey Through the Wilderness--The First Fight of the War--The War Wholly American for Two Years--The Braddock Massacre--The Great Change Wrought by William Pitt--Fall of Quebec--Momentous Consequences of the Great English Victory--The Growth and Progress of the Colonies and Their Home Life. KING WILLIAM'S WAR. If anything were needed to prove the utter uselessness and horrible barbarity of war, it is found in a history of the strife in which the American colonies were involved through the quarrels of their rulers, thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic. Men lived for years in America as neighbors, meeting and exchanging visits on the most friendly terms, and with no thought of enmity, until the arrival of some ship with news that their respective governments in Europe had gone to war. Straightway, the neighbors became enemies, and, catching up their guns, did their best to kill one another. Untold misery and hundreds of lives were lost, merely because two ambitious men had gotten into a wrangle. The result of such a dispute possessed no earthly interest to the people in the depths of the American wilderness, but loyalty to their sovereigns demanded that they should plunge into strife.