All the American Indians soon found, as the Iroquois had, that nothing would do but these newly come Frenchmen must run about over all the country. Each river must be ascended, the portages traversed, and lakes crossed. Every hint of further rivers and lakes resulted forthwith in a thousand questions, if not in the immediate formation of an exploring expedition. And yet there was method in the madness of this running about. In the first place log forts were founded at various points, and when the world came to know even a fraction as much as the French did about the West, it found that these forts were situated at the most strategic points on the continent. For instance, there was Fort Frontenac near the narrowing of Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. This fort commanded that river. Then there was Fort Niagara, which commanded the route to Lake Erie. There was Fort Detroit which commanded all access from Lake Erie to lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior. There were forts La Boeuf, Venango, and Duquesne to hold the Ohio, Fort Sandusky to hold the Sandusky river, Fort Miami at the head of the rapids on the Miami-of-the-Lakes, to hold that river, and the portage to the Wabash, and Vincennes and Kaskaskia and other posts in the Illinois country. The Indians did not object to these forts because they found that they were really no forts at all, but rather depots and warehouses for the great fur trade, where their heavy stacks of otter and sable and beaver skins could be exchanged for such splendid colored ribbons and tinkling bells, and powder, lead, and whiskey. Each fort became a trading post where the Indians gathered frequently for entertainments--of various character. Fancy if you can the emparadizing dreams which must have filled the head of many a governor of New France, as he surveyed with heaving breast the vast domains of the Mississippi valley, comprising four million square miles of delectable land, and pictured the mighty empire it would some day sustain--outrivaling the dreams of a Grand Monarque. Fancy, if you can, the great hopes of the builder of Quebec who could see the infant city holding in fee all the great system of lakes beside whose sea-outlet it stood--the Gibraltar of the new continent. Fancy the assemblies of notables which met when a returned Jesuit or forgotten coureur-de-bois came hurrying down the Ottawa in his canoe and reported the finding of a mighty river, yet unchronicled, filled with beaver and otter; a new, bright gem for the Bourbon crown!