Reaching Lake Ontario, the party stopped for a time at the French fort of Frontenac, but avoided the rival English post of Oswego, on the southern shore, where a trade in beaver skins, disastrous to French interests, was carried on, and whither many tribes, once faithful to Canada, now made resort.  On the sixth of July Celoron reached Niagara.  This, the most important pass of all the western wilderness, was guarded by a small fort of palisades on the point where the river joins the lake.  Thence, the party carried their canoes over the portage road by the cataract, and launched them upon Lake Erie.  On the fifteenth they landed on the lonely shore where the town of Portland now stands; and for the next seven days were busied in shouldering canoes and baggage up and down the steep hills, through the dense forest of beech, oak, ash, and elm, to the waters of Chautauqua Lake, eight or nine miles distant.  Here they embarked again, steering southward over the sunny waters, in the stillness and solitude of the leafy hills, till they came to the outlet, and glided down the peaceful current in the shade of the tall forests that overarched it.  This prosperity was short.  The stream was low, in spite of heavy rains that had drenched them on the carrying place.  Father Bonnecamp, chaplain of the expedition, wrote, in his Journal:  “In some places—­and they were but too frequent—­the water was only two or three inches deep; and we were reduced to the sad necessity of dragging our canoes over the sharp pebbles, which, with all our care and precaution, stripped off large slivers of the bark.  At last, tired and worn, and almost in despair of ever seeing La Belle Riviere, we entered it at noon of the 29th.”  The part of the Ohio, or “La Belle Riviere,” which they had thus happily reached, is now called the Alleghany.  The Great West lay outspread before them, a realm of wild and waste fertility.

French America had two heads,—­one among the snows of Canada, and one among the canebrakes of Louisiana; one communicating with the world through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the other through the Gulf of Mexico.  These vital points were feebly connected by a chain of military posts,—­slender, and often interrupted,—­circling through the wilderness nearly three thousand miles.  Midway between Canada and Louisiana lay the valley of the Ohio.  If the English should seize it, they would sever the chain of posts, and cut French America asunder.  If the French held it, and entrenched themselves well along its eastern limits, they would shut their rivals between the Alleghanies and the sea, control all the tribes of the West, and turn them, in case of war, against the English borders,—­a frightful and insupportable scourge.