The English land grants, made to the different colonial
companies had given them ``all land from sea to sea.'' This
sounded well on paper, but in practice, British territory
ended where the line of French fortifications began. To break
through this barrier was possible but it took both men and
money and caused a series of horrible border wars in which
both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the
Indian tribes.
As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been
no danger of war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bourbons
in their attempt to establish an autocratic form of government
and to break the power of Parliament. But in 1689 the
last of the Stuarts had disappeared from British soil and Dutch
William, the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded him. From
that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France and
England fought for the possession of India and North America.
During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies
invariably beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France
lost most of her possessions, and when peace was declared, the
entire North American continent had fallen into British hands
and the great work of exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La
Salle, Marquette and a score of others was lost to France.
Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited.
From Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect
of Puritans who were very intolerant and who therefore had
found no happiness either in Anglican England or Calvinist
Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to the Carolinas and
Virginia (the tobacco-raising provinces which had been founded
entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of
sparsely populated territory.
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