When New France fell, the English crown strictly forbade further settlement in the back country. This order was issued upon the representations of London merchants interested, as had been the merchant adventurers of France, in preserving the forest for the Indians and the fur trade; the ministry were not unmindful also that the bold and liberty-loving frontiersmen who crossed the mountains might come to consider English political control as unessential to their being. This policy was, however, diametrically opposed to the policy of the border. The fertile fields of the West were far from the observation of London officials, the spirit of unrest and the desire for gain laughed at royal proclamations, and the trans-Alleghany movement but gathered force. By the opening of the Revolution, Kentucky and Tennessee were practically staked out; by its close, Americans were sole white masters of the West to the east of the Mississippi, save for a brief holding by the British of Detroit, Mackinac, and other upper lake posts, as security for treaty obligations as yet unfulfilled. It had been the custom of England to grant lands for military service; the American colonies had likewise liberally rewarded their defenders in the Indian wars; Revolutionary soldiers were now given free access to the broad acres of the West, the direct result of this policy being the settlements of Marietta and Cleveland. Water courses have ever been of the highest importance in determining the lines of continental settlement. The river St. Lawrence and the great lakes offered to the people of New France a continual invitation to explore the regions whence they flowed. It was not long before the French found that the sources of south and west-flowing waters were not far from the banks of the eastering waterways upon which they dwelt. By ascending short tributaries, and carrying their light craft along practicable paths, or portages, first used by the Indians, they could re-launch into strange and devious paths which led to all parts of the continental interior--the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Assiniboine, and their multifarious affluents and connections. Thus easily did New France spread along the St. Lawrence and the lakes, over into the Ohio and the Mississippi, and down their gliding channels to New Orleans and the sea.