Upon the wall behind the vice-regal chair hung a great map, drawn by the bold hand of Abbé Piquet, representing the claims as well as actual possessions of France in America. A broad, red line, beginning in Acadia, traversed the map westerly, taking in Lake Ontario and running southerly along the crests and ridges of the Appalachian Mountains. It was traced with a firm hand down to far-off Louisiana, claiming for France the great valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the vast territories watered by the Missouri and the Colorado--thus hemming the English in between the walls of the Appalachian range on the west and the seacoast on the east. The Abbé Piquet had lately, in a canoe, descended the Belle Rivière, as the voyageurs called the noble Ohio. From its source to its junction with the solitary Mississippi the Abbé had planted upon its conspicuous bluffs the ensigns of France, with tablets of lead bearing the fleur-de-lis and the proud inscription, “Manibus date lilia plenis,”--lilies destined, after a fierce struggle for empire, to be trampled into the earth by the feet of the victorious English. The Abbé, deeply impressed with the dangers that impended over the Colony, labored zealously to unite the Indian nations in a general alliance with France. He had already brought the powerful Algonquins and Nipissings into his scheme, and planted them at Two Mountains as a bulwark to protect the city of Ville Marie. He had created a great schism in the powerful confederacy of the Five Nations by adroitly fanning into a flame their jealousy of English encroachments upon their ancient territory on Lake Ontario; and bands of Iroquois had, not long since, held conference with the Governor of New France, denouncing the English for disregarding their exclusive right to their own country. “The lands we possess,” said they at a great council in Ville Marie, “the lands we possess were given to us by the Master of Life, and we acknowledge to hold of no other!” The Abbé had now strong hopes of perfecting a scheme which he afterwards accomplished. A powerful body of the Iroquois left their villages and castles on the Mohawk and Genesee rivers, and under the guidance of the Abbé settled round the new Fort of La Presentation on the St. Lawrence, and thus barred that way, for the future, against the destructive inroads of their countrymen who remained faithful to the English alliance. Pending the arrival of the Royal Intendant the members of the Council indulged freely in conversation bearing more or less upon the important matters to be discussed,--the state of the country, the movements of the enemy, and not seldom intermingled remarks of dissatisfaction and impatience at the absence of the Intendant. The revel at Beaumanoir was well known to them; and eyes flashed and lips curled in open scorn at the well-understood reason of the Intendant's delay.