In a previous chapter reference has already been made to the fatality of having no form of union among the Thirteen Colonies. Every chance of concentration existed towards the end of the seventeenth century, for the colonies were contiguous, they lay in compact and continuous territory along the eastern seaboard, backed by the boundary of the Alleghanies. They were too, for the most part, inhabited by Englishmen, who may originally have been driven to emigrate for very different reasons, but who were in reality of the same stock and blood. But though everything pointed to union, the necessary concomitants were comparative only, and union was impossible. The colonies were squabbling, jarring communities, without any constitutional links; they were surrounded and separated by vast tracts of impenetrable forest; their traditions, religions, and beliefs were entirely opposed; and each colony was as much divided in thought and feeling from its neighbours as from the home country. This lack of concentration was one of the main differences between the English on the American coast and the French in Canada. This want of union was unknown in New France, where centralisation, perhaps over-centralisation, was the predominating feature. One governor at the head of all, a semi-feudal system, and an absolute reliance upon each other and upon support from home made the numerically inferior Canada in some respects superior to the Thirteen Colonies. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, therefore, the French possessed great advantages over their southern rivals; and the English, disunited and internally jealous, were likely to prove impotent against the Government of Quebec. From the very first the relations between the colonies and Canada had been unfriendly, but the feelings of antagonism increased as the seventeenth century grew in years; and by the time that Frontenac ruled Canada and Thomas Dongan was English Governor at New York, this feeling had reached a climax. So pressing had the question become that the colonies, in 1684, held a general conference at Albany, the outcome of which, to the alarm of the French, was a firm alliance with the Five Nations or Iroquois. No greater struggle, however, resulted than an acrimonious literary warfare between the energetic Dongan and the capable Denonville concerning numerous attacks upon English and Dutch traders.