Chance rather than choice determined the position of the several colonies that were planted on the American soil. So little was known of the natural conditions of the continent, or even of its shore geography, and the little that had been discovered was so unknown to navigators in general, that it was not possible to exercise much discretion in the placing of the first settlers in the New World. It happened that in this lottery the central parts of the American continent fell to the English people; while the French, by one chance and another, came into possession of two parts of the coast separated by over two thousand miles of shore. It will be plain from the map that these two positions were essentially the keys to the continent. The access to the interior of the continent by natural water-ways is by two lines,—on the north by the St. Lawrence system of lakes and rivers; on the south by the Mississippi system of rivers, which practically connects with the St. Lawrence system. Fortune, in giving France the control of these two great avenues, offered her the mastery of the whole of its vast domain. We have only to consider the part that the pathway of the Rhine played in the history of mediæval trade in Europe, to understand how valuable these lines would have been until railways and canals had come to compete with water-ways-. The only long-continued and systematic effort that France made to perpetuate her power in North America was made through the Valley of the St. Lawrence. Let us, therefore, consider the physical conditions of this valley, and their influence upon the colonies that were planted there. The St. Lawrence River system and the valley it drains is most peculiar. It is, indeed, without its like in all the world. At the mouth of the main river we have a set of rugged islands and peninsulas enclosing an estuarine sea, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which gradually narrows in the course of three hundred miles to the channel of the great river. Ascending this river, the early explorers found a wonderful set of rapids; then a lake larger than any sheet of fresh water that had been seen by Europeans; then the swift channel of the Niagara River with its great Falls; then, above, a series of four great lakes, giving a real Mediterranean of fresh water. On the north was a rude and unpromising country, rising upward into low but sterile and rugged mountains; but on the south the natural boundaries of the valley about the Great Lakes hardly exist: indeed, it was possible in the time of rains for small boats to pass directly from Lake Michigan to the waters of the Mississippi without a portage. It is this absence of the southern bounding wall which constitutes the most peculiar feature in this region of geographical surprises.