Frontenac saw the importance of occupying the strategic points on the lakes. He himself went up the St. Lawrence River and planted on the site of Kingston the fort that bore his name. He encouraged La Salle to build a trading post at Niagara, and did all in his power to gain Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for the French. Gradually the French succeeded in making their way eastward. They occupied the strait of Detroit, and built forts at Sandusky, Presque Isle (Erie), Niagara, Oswego, and Toronto. The English seized these forts and planted many more. When the Americans in their turn took possession, and Wayne’s treaty of Greenville gave, in 1796, some assurance of safety in the region, they sent out not only soldiers but colonists and settlers. Their story is the tale of the beginning of our modern civilization. In the early days of the American Revolution, Congress suggested to the states that they should cede their claims to lands west of the Allegheny to the central government; but many years elapsed before the United States gained from the eastern states these cessions. Of all the states Connecticut had the best claim; in making its cession it reserved a triangular bit of country on the southern shore of Lake Erie, west of Pennsylvania, which was known as the Western Reserve. Before long a Connecticut land company bought three million acres in this tract at forty cents an acre, and in the spring of 1796 Moses Cleveland with fifty associates set out to plant on the shores of Lake Erie the colony of New Connecticut. They decided to found their first settlement at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which was the terminus of several trails, notably that which led to Akron, Ohio, and south to Marietta. At this spot, on the 22d of July, 1796, they began to build their houses, where stands to-day the city of Cleveland, and so rapid was the growth of this region that in four years’ time there were thirty-two settlements within the limits of the Connecticut Reserve. Massachusetts ceded to the United States her claims to lands west of Pennsylvania, but retained her right to lands in what is now western New York. In 1788 she sold to a company of New Yorkers a large part of these lands, including the Genesee Valley. At this time there was but one white man’s cabin between Oswego and Fort Niagara. The falls of the Genesee attracted settlers, because there they could build mills for grinding corn and sawing lumber. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, with three other Maryland gentlemen, purchased in 1802 one hundred acres at this point, including the site of this mill, and laid out a village, opening the sale of lots in 1811. He moved to his land in 1818, the little village was named after him, and before many years became a prosperous town.