On maps of British America in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, one sees the eastern coast, from Maine to Georgia, gashed with ten or twelve colored patches, very different in size and shape, and defined more or less distinctly by dividing lines, which in some cases are prolonged westward until they reach the Mississippi, or even across it and stretch indefinitely towards the Pacific. These patches are the British Provinces, and the western prolongation of their boundary represents their several claims to vast interior tracts founded on ancient grants, but not made good by occupation or vindicated by an exertion of power * * * Each Province remained in jealous isolation, busied with its own work, growing in strength, in the capacity of self-rule, in the spirit of independence, and stubbornly resisting all exercise of authority from without. If the English-speaking population flowed westward, it was in obedience to natural laws, for the King did not aid the movement, and the royal Governor had no authority to do so. The power of the colonies was that of a rising flood, slowly invading and conquering by the unconscious force of its own growing volume, unless means be found to hold it back by dams and embankments within appointed limits. In the French colonies it was different. Here the representatives of the crown were men bred in the atmosphere of broad ambition and masterful, far-reaching enterprise. They studied the strong and weak points of their rivals, and with a cautious forecast and a daring energy set themselves to the task of defeating them. If the English colonies were comparatively strong in numbers these numbers could not be brought into action, while if French forces were small they were vigorously commanded and always ready at a word. It was union confronting division, energy confronting apathy, and military centralization opposed to industrial democracy, and for a time the advantage was all on one side. Yet in view of what France had achieved, of the patient gallantry of her explorers, the zeal of her missionaries, the adventurous hardihood of her bush-rangers, revealing to mankind the existence of this wilderness world, while her rivals plodded at their workshops, their farms, their fisheries; in view of all this, her pretensions were moderate and reasonable compared to those of England. Forks of the Ohio.--Washington's First Visit. The Treaty of Utrecht had decided that the Iroquois or Five Nations were British subjects; therefore it was insisted that all countries conquered by them belonged to the British crown. The range of the Iroquois war parties was prodigious, and the English laid claim to every mountain, forest and prairie where an Iroquois had taken a scalp. This would give them not only all between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, but all between Ottawa and Huron, leaving nothing to France but the part now occupied by the Province of Quebec.