The Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson had offered the founders of Quebec and Montreal the most direct course to the New England settlements. They had learned it well in their campaigns against the Iroquois. The keys of this route were the portage paths between the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu in the north; and the portages between Lakes Champlain and George, and Lake George and the Hudson River in the south. As early as 1664 Jacques de Chambly erected a fort at the foot of the rapids, at Chambly on the Richelieu, at the end of the thirteen-mile portage from La Prarie three miles above Montreal on the St. Lawrence. Two other forts, Fort St. Louis and Fort Sainte Terese, also guarded the Richelieu River; and at its head, at the foot of Lake Champlain, stood Fort Richelieu. Later a portage path fifteen miles in length was built from La Prarie (Laprairie) to Fort John (St. Johns), below the "Island of St. Therese." Ascending Lake Champlain the French quickly perceived the strategic positions of Crown Point and "Carillon"--at the end of the portage from Lake George--where they erected Fort Crown Point in 1727, and Fort Frederick (Ticonderoga) in 1731. The English on the other hand ascended the Hudson from Albany, and built Fort Ingoldesby at Stillwater in 1709, and Fort Nicholson at Fort Edward in the same year. At the Wood Creek end of the portage another fort was built first named Fort Schuyler, later named Fort Anne. Fort Edward and Fort William Henry were built in 1755. This chain of forts from Albany to Montreal, guarding the important passageways on land and water, marks the line of what was known as "the Grand Pass from New York to Montreal." The last struggle for this line of communication, Johnson's rebuke to the advancing Dieskau, Abercrombie's stroke at Fort Ticonderoga, the brilliant Montcalm's capture of Fort William Henry, and, finally, the wresting of the Champlain Valley from the French by the hitherto defeated English, forms a unique romance which finds its key of action at the portage paths which united the Hudson, Lake George, and Lake Champlain.