CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS.--John Knox, _Historical Journal_ (1757-1760); Pouchot, _Mémoires_ (also in translation); Franklin, _Works_ (especially on the Albany Congress); Washington, _Works_, especially his _Journal_ (Sparks's edition, II. 432-447); Robert Rogers, _Journal; Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York_, X.--Reprints in _American History told by Contemporaries_, II. 12. RIVAL CLAIMS IN NORTH AMERICA (1690-1754). [Sidenote: International rivalry.] "The firing of a gun in the woods of North America brought on a conflict which drenched Europe in blood." In this rhetorical statement is suggested the result of a great change in American conditions after 1750. For the first time in the history of the colonies the settlements of England and France were brought so near together as to provoke collisions in time of peace. The attack on the French by the Virginia troops under Washington in 1754 was an evidence that France and England were ready to join in a struggle for the possession of the interior of the continent, even though it led to a general European war. [Sidenote: Legal arguments.] The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748 (Colonies, § 112) had not laid down a definite line between the French and the English possessions west of the mountains, According to the principles of international law observed at the time of colonization, each power was entitled to the territory drained by the rivers falling into that part of the sea-coast which it controlled. The French, therefore, asserted a _prima facie_ title to the valleys of the St. Lawrence and of the Mississippi (§ 2); if there was a natural boundary between the two powers, it was the watershed north and west of the sources of the St. John, Penobscot, Connecticut, Hudson, Susquehanna, Potomac, and James. On neither side had permanent settlements been established far beyond this irregular ridge. This natural boundary had, however, been disregarded in the early English grants. Did not the charter of 1609 give to Virginia the territory "up into the land, from sea to sea, west and northwest"? (Colonies, § 29.) Did not the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Carolina grants run westward to the "South Sea"? And although these grants had lapsed, the power of the king to make them was undiminished; the Pennsylvania charter, the latest of all, gave title far west of the mountains. [Sidenote: Expediency.]