There were three points at which the two nations, France and England, met and struck fire in the interior of North America, and in each instance it was the French who were the aggressors--because of the easy means of access which they had into the disputed frontier region. They came up the Chaudière and down the Kennebec or up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, striking at the heart of New England; they ascended the St. Lawrence and entered Lake Ontario, coveted and claimed by the Province of New York; they pushed through Lake Ontario and down the Allegheny to the Ohio River, which Virginia loved and sought to guard. The French tried to guard these three avenues of approach by erecting fortresses on the Richelieu River, on Lakes Champlain, Ontario, and Erie, and on the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. These forts were the weights on the net which the French were stretching from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. And when that net was drawn taut New England and New York and Virginia would be swept into the sea! It was a splendid scheme--but the weights were not heavy enough. After interminable blunders and delays the English broke into the net and then by desperate floundering tore it to fragments. They reached the line of forts by three routes, each difficult and hazardous, for in any case vast stretches of forests were to be passed; and until the very last, the French had strong Indian allies who guarded these forests with valor worthy of a happier cause. New England defended herself by ascending the Hudson and crossing the portage to Lake George and Lake Champlain. New York ascended the Mohawk and, crossing the famous Oneida portage to Odeida Lake, descended the Onondaga River to Oswego on Lake Ontario. Virginia spreading out, according to her unchallenged claims, across the entire continent, could only reach the French on the Ohio by ascending the Potomac to a point near the mouth of Wills Creek, whence an Indian path led northwestward over a hundred miles to the Monongahela, which was descended to its junction with the Ohio. The two former routes, to Lake Champlain and to Lake Ontario, were, with short portages, practically all-water routes, over which provisions and army stores could be transported northward to the zone into which the French had likewise come by water-routes. The critical points of both routes of both hostile nations were the strategic portages where land travel was rendered imperative by the difficulties of navigation. On these portages many forts instantly sprang into existence--in some instances mere posts and entrepôts, in some cases strongly fortified citadels.