a strange, rough, straggling cincture the East and the West. The young colonies were being confined to the Atlantic Ocean by a chain of forts the French were forging from Quebec to New Orleans. Had they not awakened to the task of shattering that chain it is doubtful if the expansion of the colonies could ever have meant what it has to the western world. Could Virginia have borne a son in the western wilderness, Kentucky by name, if France had held the Ohio Valley? Could North Carolina have given birth to a Tennessee if France had made good her claim to the Mississippi? Could New England and New York and Pennsylvania have produced the fruits the nineteenth century saw blossom in the Old Northwest if France had maintained her hold within that mighty empire? The rough track of Braddock's Road, almost forgotten and almost obliterated, is one of the best memorials of the earliest struggle of the Colonies for the freedom which was indispensable to their progress. There was not an hour throughout the Revolutionary struggle when the knowledge of the great West that was to be theirs was
