This chain of forts from Albany to Montreal, guarding the important passageways on land and water, marks the line of what was known as "the Grand Pass from New York to Montreal." The last struggle for this line of communication, Johnson's rebuke to the advancing Dieskau, Abercrombie's stroke at Fort Ticonderoga, the brilliant Montcalm's capture of Fort William Henry, and, finally, the wresting of the Champlain Valley from the French by the hitherto defeated English, forms a unique romance which finds its key of action at the portage paths which united the Hudson, Lake George, and Lake Champlain.
There were other routes into New England, known of old, on which the French had spread terror throughout the North Atlantic slope. They came up the Chaudière and down the Kennebec into Massachusetts' "Province of Main." Early in the French and Indian wars Massachusetts began another series of campaigns, to secure again and once for all the Kennebec Valley, building Forts Halifax (1754) and Western (1752) at the head of navigation. At the northern end of the portage between the Kennebec and "Rivière Puante," on the Morris map of 1749, here presented, we find the Indian village Wanaucok still described as a nest of "Indians in the French interest." These allies of the French around the highland portages explain the need of English forts on the Kennebec. The forts of the Connecticut River were largely necessitated by the routes of travel between the heads of its tributaries and the "Rivière S^t. Francis" and "Otter River." On the Morris map we read "Indians of S^t. Francis in league with the French." The mouth of Otter Creek was near Fort Ticonderoga, and it offered, with a portage to the Connecticut, another route of French aggression. "From this Fort the French make their excursions," reads the interesting Morris map, "and have this war [1745 _seq._] burnt and destroy'd two Forts (Saratoga and Fort Massachusets) and broke up upwards of 30 Settlements."
[_Showing important portages between the St. Lawrence and New England rivers_] (_From the original in the British Museum_)]
The Hudson-Lake George portage marked the most important course from Canada to New York, but there was another route which was fought for earnestly. The French could ascend the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and gain access to the entire rear of New York, and by a dozen minor waterways the Hudson again could be reached. The St. Lawrence had long been an avenue of French exploration and missionary activity. "The route thither (from Quebec up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe to Georgian Bay to the land of the Hurons) is very easy, there being only two waterfalls where it is necessary to land and make a portage--a short one at that; and there it would be easy to construct a small redoubt for the purpose of maintaining free communication and of making ourselves masters of this great lake."[20] Thus the Jesuits "had anticipated by twenty years Frontenac's plan of building a fort for the control of Lake Ontario."[21] Fort Frontenac (Kingston, Canada, 1673) guarded the French end of Lake Ontario, while the English ascended the Mohawk and descended the "Onnondaga" (Oswego) to its mouth (Oswego, New York) where they erected Fort Oswego in 1722, which Montcalm captured in 1757.