At thirty years of age he had acquired the reputation of a capable, active, zealous officer, but so far he had given little indication of the great fame which was soon to be his. In 1758 he first crossed the Atlantic; and here we may interrupt the narrative in order to explain the condition of affairs at that time in America. By the middle of the eighteenth century the British had established themselves in thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast from Florida to Nova Scotia. The French had chosen Quebec as their capital, and had occupied Acadia (now the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) and the valley of the St. Lawrence from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. A new England and a new France had thus grown up in the New World. New England grew rapidly in population and wealth. New France also prospered, though in a lesser degree. Its progress was hindered by constant warfare with the Indians, by the trading enterprise of the British, and by the interference of the home government. The two white races constantly advanced their frontiers, and their outposts drew nearer and nearer to each other every year. Border strife between the rival nations soon became frequent. In 1690, for example, the British settlers invaded New France to revenge themselves for the plunder of certain frontier stations. The invaders were driven back, but for years afterwards the French and the British kept up an irregular warfare. During the War of the Spanish Succession a powerful British fleet which was protecting the colonies seized that part of Acadia now known as Nova Scotia. Though Britain had colonized the whole Atlantic seaboard from Florida to Nova Scotia, her territories had not advanced inland beyond the great barrier of the Alleghany Mountains. France, in addition to Canada, possessed the colony of Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi. She claimed that Louisiana stretched to the head-waters of the Mississippi and its tributary the Ohio. Had this claim been allowed, the British seaboard colonies would have been shut in on the west, and prevented from extending to the rich plains of the interior. Already the British needed elbow-room, for they numbered some 2,000,000, while the French in all the vast territory which they claimed could only muster 180,000.