WILLIAM PITT, FIRST EARL OF CHATHAM
FROM THE PAINTING BY W. HOARE IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.
Such, then, was the history of the last colony to be founded, completing the unlucky number thirteen, and it remained the weakest and least efficient of all. From small beginnings the English colonies came into being along the Eastern seaboard of America. Puritans and cavaliers, profligates and mechanics, all helped to create what might have been except for sad misunderstandings part of the British empire of to-day. Behind the Alleghany slopes another great power was attempting to form a colonial empire. North of the St Lawrence, New France had already been established; by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana had already been named. In some places not inaccessible hills, in others not unnavigable rivers divided the Briton from the Gaul. It was inevitable that sooner or later the struggle between the two great powers must come. It might be fought in Europe upon battlefields which are familiar to all, but it was also fought out upon the far distant border line, and the struggles of the colonial militia with the French Canadian backwoodsman presents a story of endurance, courage, and determination equal if not superior to the annals of those English regiments which fought in the Netherlands or on "the plains of Germany."
FOOTNOTES:
[187] Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1677-1680, p. 587.
[188] Compare the N.J. Archives, ii., p. 420.
[189] Quoted in the Enc. Britannica.
[190] Janney, Life of William Penn (1852).
[191] Pastorius, Geographical Description of Pennsylvania (1850).
[192] New Jersey Historical Society, Proceedings (1849-1850).