%71.  Louisiana, or the Mississippi Basin.%—­The landing of La Salle on the coast of Texas, and the building of Fort St. Louis of Texas, gave the French a claim to the coast as far southward as a point halfway between the fort and the nearest Spanish settlement, in Mexico.  At that point was the Rio Grande, a good natural boundary.  On the French maps, therefore, Louisiana extended from the Rocky Mountains and the Rio Grande on the west, to the Alleghany Mountains on the east, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to New France on the north.  This confined the English colonies to a narrow strip between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean.  As the colonies were growing in population, and as the charters of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and Carolina gave them great stretches of territory in the Mississippi valley, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, a bitter contest for possession of the country should take place between the French and the English in America.

The contest began in 1689, and ended in 1763, and may easily be divided into two periods:  1.  That from 1689 to 1748, when the struggle was for Acadia and New France. 2.  That from 1754 to 1763, when the struggle was not only for New France, but for Louisiana also.

%72.  The Struggle for Acadia and New France; “King William’s War."%—­In 1688-89 there was a revolution in England, in the course of which James II. was driven from his throne, and William and Mary, his nephew and daughter, were seated on it.  James took refuge in France, and when Louis XIV. attempted to restore him, a great European war followed, and of course the colonists of the two countries were very soon fighting each other.  As the quarrel did not arise on this side of the ocean, the English colonists called it “King William’s War”; but on our continent it was really the beginning of a long struggle to determine whether France or England should rule North America.

The French recognized this at once, and sent over a very able soldier—­Count Frontenac—­with orders to conquer New York; but the colony was saved by the Iroquois, who in the summer of 1689 began a war of their own against the French, laid siege to Montreal, and roasted French captives under its walls.  Frontenac was compelled to put off his attack till 1690, when in the dead of winter a band of French and Indians burned Schenectady, N.Y.  Salmon Falls in New Hampshire was next laid waste (1690), and Fort Loyal, where Portland, Me., is, was taken and destroyed.  A little later Exeter, N.H., was attacked.  The boldness and suddenness of these fearful massacres so alarmed the people exposed to them that in May, 1690, delegates from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New York met at New York city to devise a plan of attack on the French.  Now, at the opening of the war, there were three French strongholds in America.  These were Montreal and Quebec in Canada, and Port Royal in Acadia.  In 1690 a Massachusetts