We shall soon hear more of Vaudreuil the governor.
CHAPTER II
MONTCALM IN CANADA
1756
The French colonies in North America consisted of nothing
more than two very long and very thin lines of scattered
posts and settlements, running up the St Lawrence and
the Mississippi to meet, in the far interior, at the
Great Lakes. Along the whole of these four thousand miles
there were not one hundred thousand people. Only two
parts of the country were really settled at all: one
Acadia, the other the shores of the St Lawrence between
Bic and Montreal; and both regions together covered not
more than four hundred of the whole four thousand miles.
There were but three considerable towns--Louisbourg,
Quebec, and Montreal--and Quebec, which was much the
largest, had only twelve thousand inhabitants.
The territory bordering on the Mississippi was called
Louisiana. That in the St Lawrence region was called New
France along the river and Acadia down by the Gulf; though
Canada is much the best word to cover both. Now, Canada
had ten times as many people as Louisiana; and Louisiana
by itself seemed helplessly weak. This very weakness made
the French particularly anxious about the country south
of the Lakes, where Canada and Louisiana met. For, so
long as they held it, they held the gateways of the West,
kept the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi quite
securely, shut up the British colonies between the
Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic and prevented them
from expanding westward.
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