Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/127

 -1763] Success of the sugar islands. 95 steadily increased. The French had two sources of hope the disunion of the British colonies, and the chance of permanently limiting their power of geographical expansion. But the steady pressure of British traders across the mountains, up to the district south of Lake Erie, the creation of the Ohio Company by the Virginians, and the influence which the English were learning to obtain over the Indians, under the guidance of such men as Sir William Johnson, showed that this last hope was of the slenderest. De la Gallissoniere's desperate effort to confine the English within the Alleghanies was too late and too ill-supported to do more than betray the French designs to the English colonists. The interest of the Crown in the protection of Canada was seen mainly in the steps taken to guard the mouth of the St Lawrence, after the cession of Acadia and Newfoundland to England by the Treaty of Utrecht had endangered it. To replace these losses, the great fort of Louisbourg was built on Cape Breton Island at a cost of 30 million livres. As the port here was never frozen, great hopes of its future were entertained; and it was believed that here was a centre from which Acadia might be recovered, the French Newfoundland fisheries protected, New England destroyed, and a great Canadian trade with the West Indies developed. But again the old difficulty of establishing any settled population stood in the way, and the isolated fort proved useless when the struggle came. The British possession of Acadia on the other hand did not open up the path into Canada in the ready way that was anticipated. The strong national feeling of the French settlers, and their close alliance with the Abenaki Indians, who for generations had kept the frontiers of New England in alarm, involved the English in grave difficulties. The events which led up to the expatriation of the French taught the English lessons which proved of service when the government of Canada had to be settled. The brilliant success of the French sugar islands in the eighteenth century forms a distinct episode in the history of French colonisation. Here, with less deliberate schemes, less guidance and government support, the great trade was developed which in Canada and Louisiana was only dreamed of. The accidents of fortune must always exert exceptional sway when the forces of nature are all-powerful. When storm, earth- quake and disease may annihilate the prosperity of an island in a brief space, the inclination to exploit its riches with the utmost possible speed is not to be held in check. Each of these islands in turn has enjoyed a golden period of longer or shorter duration a fact which makes it difficult to determine how far prosperity has, in any given case, been due to a good system of government. In the eighteenth century English writers praised the French system in unmeasured terms, seeing before their eyes the prosperity of "the pearl of the Antilles," St Domingo,