Portage Paths Author:Archer Butler Hulbert Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE EVOLUTION OF PORTAGES FROM every point of view the portages of America, considered historically, were most important, because by reason of t... more »heir strategic position they were coigns of vantage for military operations. Picture the continent at the opening of the culminating phases of the Old French War in 1740-1760. For nearly two centuries military and civil officials, missionaries and traders had been passing to and fro on the Ottawa, St. Lawrence, and Richelieu, through Canada, Illinois, and Louisiana, erecting forts and establishing chapels and trading stations. Little by little the English settlements had crept back into the interior. Ten score of portage paths had been traversed; forts and blockhouses had been built, captured, burned, and rebuilt. Flying parties of French had swooped down into New York, and English andDutch had chased them back. Both sides had become more and more acquainted with the geography of the continent, and now, when war was about to begin in earnest, both antagonists leaped forward quickly to seize for once and all the vital spots in the "communications" in the neutral ground between them, where the vanguards had been bickering and fighting for at least a century. The Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson had offered the founders of Quebec and Montreal the most direct course to the New England settlements. They had learned it well in their campaigns against the Iroquois. The keys of this route were the portage paths between the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu in the north; and the portages between Lakes Champlain and George, and Lake George and the Hudson River in the south. As early as 1664 Jacques de Chambly erected a fort at the foot of the rapids, at Chambly on the Richelieu, at the end of the thirteen-mile portage...« less