They were small frontier communities,
nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had
gathered to make a new home and begin life among happier
surroundings, far away from royal supervision and interference.
The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained
a possession of the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were
allowed in these colonies for fear that they might contaminate
the Indians with their dangerous Protestant doctrines and
would perhaps interfere with the missionary work of the Jesuit
fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been founded
upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and
rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energy of
the English middle classes, while the French settlements were
inhabited by people who had crossed the ocean as servants of the
king and who expected to return to Paris at the first possible chance.
Politically, however, the position of the English colonies
was far from satisfactory. The French had discovered the
mouth of the Saint Lawrence in the sixteenth century. From
the region of the Great Lakes they had worked their way southward,
had descended the Mississippi and had built several fortifications
along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century of exploration,
a line of sixty French forts cut off the English settlements
along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior.
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