At the time of which we speak, his fortunes had not reached their zenith; yet his influence was great; and during the war of 1745, when he held the chief control of Indian affairs in New York, it was exercised in a manner most beneficial to the province. After the peace of Aix la Chapelle, in 1748, finding his measures ill supported, he threw up his office in disgust. Still his mere personal influence sufficed to embarrass the intrigues of the busy priest at La Présentation; and a few years later, when the public exigency demanded his utmost efforts, he resumed, under better auspices, the official management of Indian affairs. And now, when the blindest could see that between the rival claimants to the soil of America nothing was left but the arbitration of the sword, no man friendly to the cause of England could observe without alarm how France had strengthened herself in Indian alliances. The Iroquois, it is true, had not quite gone over to her side; nor had the Delawares wholly forgotten their ancient league with William Penn. The Miamis, too, in the valley of the Ohio, had lately taken umbrage at the conduct of the French, and betrayed a leaning to the side of England, while several tribes of the south showed a similar disposition. But, with few and slight exceptions, the numerous tribes of the great lakes and the Mississippi, besides a host of domiciliated savages in Canada itself, stood ready at the bidding of France to grind their tomahawks and turn loose their ravenous war-parties; while the British colonists had too much reason to fear that even those tribes which seemed most friendly to their cause, and which formed the sole barrier of their unprotected borders, might, at the first sound of the war-whoop, be found in arms against them. CHAPTER IV. 1700-1755. COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES.