It has been seen that the British North American colonies contained upward of 1,300,000 inhabitants at the commencement of the campaign which destroyed the power of France on the Western continent. Enormous as was this physical superiority over the rival colony of Canada, the wealth and resources of the British bore a vastly greater proportion to those of their enemies. Barnaby, an intelligent English traveler who at this time visited America, informs us that all the luxurious fruits of wealth were displayed in our transatlantic settlements; and that, in a journey of 1200 miles through the country, he was never once solicited for alms. At the same time, he observes that the people were already imbued with a strong spirit of independence,[161] and that a deep but vague impression existed that they were destined for some splendid future. But among these sturdy and ambitious men mutual jealousies rendered a permanent union of their councils apparently impossible; the mother country failed in her effort to bring the strength of her gigantic colonies to bear together[162] upon any imperial object, although she subsequently succeeded but too well in creating unanimity of feeling against herself. By the fall of Louisburg, and the complete subjection of the Acadian peninsula, the high road of the St. Lawrence lay open to the British fleets; the capture of Fort du Quesne, and the occupation of the forks of the Ohio, had given to England the command of the vast chain of navigable communication which connected the Canadian lakes with the distant waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the 60,000 French of North America were hopelessly isolated from their parent state, and left to the mercy of their exasperated and powerful foes. Already their Indian allies had wavered or seceded: no longer able to afford protection or supply their commerce, the Canadian governor sank rapidly in savage estimation; and even the "Great Father" beyond the seas ceased to be regarded with the superstitious reverence formerly felt toward him by his red children. But the lofty spirit of France was still unbroken by these losses and dangers; even in this time of need she disdained to abandon or modify her pretensions to the dominion of those Western wilds of America, for the possession of which she had first drawn the sword, and she determined to risk the utter ruin of her transatlantic power rather than patiently submit to its diminution. Quebec and Canada might have been saved had she acquiesced in our just right and title to the ancient limits of Acadia, as marked out by former treaties, and had she refrained from the prosecution of that vast scheme of encroachment by which the British settlements would have been inclosed from Louisiana to the great lakes of the north.