A broad, red line,
beginning in Acadia, traversed the map westerly, taking in Lake
Ontario and running southerly along the crests and ridges of the
Appalachian Mountains. It was traced with a firm hand down to far-
off Louisiana, claiming for France the great valleys of the Ohio,
the Mississippi, and the vast territories watered by the Missouri
and the Colorado--thus hemming the English in between the walls of
the Appalachian range on the west and the seacoast on the east.
The Abbe Piquet had lately, in a canoe, descended the Belle Riviere,
as the voyageurs called the noble Ohio. From its source to its
junction with the solitary Mississippi the Abbe had planted upon its
conspicuous bluffs the ensigns of France, with tablets of lead
bearing the fleur-de-lis and the proud inscription, "Manibus date
lilia plenis,"--lilies destined, after a fierce struggle for empire,
to be trampled into the earth by the feet of the victorious English.
The Abbe, deeply impressed with the dangers that impended over the
Colony, labored zealously to unite the Indian nations in a general
alliance with France.
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