=110. How the Colonial Boys learned to shoot.=--We can now well understand that the settlement of a new country amid hostile Indians demanded from our colonial fathers eternal vigilance, and developed in them remarkable skill with firearms. Even the colonial boy, we are told, as soon as he was big enough to level a musket, was given powder and ball to shoot squirrels. After a little practice he was required to bring in as many squirrels as he was given charges for the gun, under penalty of a severe lecture, or even of having his "jacket tanned"! At the age of twelve the boy became a block-house soldier, with a loophole assigned him from which to shoot when the settlement was attacked by the Indians. Growing older, he became a hunter of deer, bears, and other wild animals, and had at any moment, day or night, to be in readiness to pit his life against those of hostile Indians. =111. Capture of Louisburg.=--During the third French and Indian war, which began when George Washington was a boy of fourteen and which lasted four years, the New England colonists determined to strike a hard blow against France. They fitted out an army of about four thousand fishermen and farmers, put their expedition under the command of General William Pepperell, and sailed from Boston to capture Louisburg on the island of Cape Breton. With its walls of masonry thirty feet high this was the strongest fortress on the continent except Quebec, and was known as the "Gibraltar of America." It commanded the entrance to the Gulf and the mouth of the St. Lawrence. With the aid of a British fleet the colonists laid siege to the great fortress. After a lively contest of about six weeks, Louisburg was taken (1745). The colonial army returned to Boston and was received with shouts of joy. But at the close of the war Louisburg was restored to the French. Great was the wrath of the colonists, who spoke of the day of surrender as "a black day, to be forever blotted out of New England calendars." =112. The Struggle beyond the Alleghanies.=--For a long time the Alleghany Mountains served as a natural boundary between the English settlements in the East and the French trading-posts and forts in the West. Meanwhile the English settlers were steadily pushing westward over the mountains and beginning to trade with the Indians on the other side. The French merchants often met their hated rivals in the woods and quarreled with them. From the first, England claimed all this country as her own, and looked upon the building of French forts as an invasion of her territory. The French stirred up the Indians to drive the English away, and would not even allow them to make so much as a survey of land in the rich Ohio valley.