Two batteries each of three twelve pounders, would have been more

than sufficient to reduce that establishment to ashes.

It was prejudicial to us by the facility it af-

1 The Genesee River. In Belin's Map of Partie Orcidentale de la Nouvelle France, 1755 (No. 992 W. C. State Lib.) it is described as a " River unknown to Geographers, filled with Rapids and Waterfalls."

2 The highest fall on the river is 105 feet. 3 Sodus bay.

:

EARLY SETTLEMENT AT 0SDENSBUR6H.

forded the English of communicating with all the tribes of Canada still more than by the trade carried on there as well by the French of the Colony as by the savages

:

for Choeguen was supplied with

merchandize adapted only to the French, at least as much as with what suited to the savages, a circumstance that indicated an illicit trade. Had the Minister's orders been executed, the Choeguen trade at least with the savages of Upper Canada would be almost ruined.

But it was necessary to supply Niagara, especially the Portage, rather than Toronto. The difference between the two first of these posts and the last is, that three or four hundred canoes could come loaded with furs to the Portage, and that no canoes could go to Toronto except those which cannot pass before Niagara and to Fort Frontenac, such as the Otaois of the

head of the Lake {Fond du Lac) and the Mississa°-ues

so that Toronto could not but diminish the trade of these two antient posts, which would have been sufficient to stop all the savages had the stores been furnished with goods to their liking.