Denonville determined to conquer the Senecas, the most hostile of the Five Nations, and “card money,” as it was called, the first paper money of America, made payable in France, was issued to defray the expenses of the war. A number of chiefs, decoyed into Fort Frontenac, were treacherously taken prisoners and shipped to France to work in the galleys. The Seneca country was ravaged by a force of 800 regulars, 1,000 Canadians, and 300 Indians; this roused the whole body of the Iroquois, and the invasion of the French territory was threatened. After a short interval of peace, the Iroquois came down on the island of Montreal, which they surprised, killing 200 persons, and taking the same number prisoners. Quebec was in the utmost danger. At this disastrous moment the accession of William of Orange to the English throne having involved England and France in war, new troubles threatened the French colonies, of which we shall speak anon. “Canada,” says Hildreth, “though long planted, had not flourished; the soil and the climate were alike unfavourable. The colonial government was a military despotism; the land was held on feudal tenures, and the body of the colonists, unaccustomed to think or act for themselves, had little energy or activity of spirit. If the missionaries and fur-traders were exceptions, their number was small, and their undertakings remote and scattered, calculated to disperse over a vast extent a scanty population, which amounted as yet to hardly 12,000 persons.” These missionaries and fur-traders had, however, produced wonderful results; spite of continual hostility from the terrible Iroquois, they had acquainted themselves with the great lakes of the West; they had established missionary posts along the shores of the Huron, Superior and Michigan lakes; they had explored the Mississippi from the falls of St. Anthony to the sea; and had traced the Fox River, the Wisconsin and the Illinois from their sources to their confluence with the great river; and that, while the rivers Connecticut, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac and the James remained unexplored by the British settlers on their lower waters. The settlements in Acadia had never acquired much vigour, and the total of the French inhabitants in this portion of the French American territory did not amount to 3,000. CHAPTER XXIV. THE COLONIES AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. We must now take a hasty glance at the colonies, which we left at the eve of the Revolution of 1688, and discover how this great change affected them.