He chose
Celoron, the most capable of the hardy young Canadian noblesse
whom he had at hand, a man accustomed to the life of the forest,
and sent with him this large party to assert against the English
the right of France to the valley of the Ohio. The English were
now to be shut out definitely from advancing westward and to be
confined to the strip of territory lying between the Atlantic
coast and the Alleghany Mountains, a little more than that strip
fifty miles wide talked about in Quebec as the maximum concession
of France, but still not very much according to the ideas of the
English, and even this not secure if France should ever grow
strong enough to crowd them out.
At no time do we find more vivid the contrast in type between the
two nations. Before a concrete fact the British take action. When
they gave up Louisbourg they built Halifax. Their traders had
pressed into the Ohio country, not directed under any grandiose
idea of empire, but simply as individuals, to trade and reap for
themselves what profit they could. When they were checked and
menaced by the French, they saw that something must be done.
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