History of Louisisana | Page 9

those inland parts of North America will be
of no use to Britain, on account of their distance {xi} from the sea, and
inconvenience to navigation. That indeed might be said of the parts
which lie immediately beyond the mountains, as the country of the
Cherokees, and Ohio Indians about Pitsburg, the only countries
thereabouts that we can extend our settlements to; which are so
inconvenient to navigation, that nothing can be brought from them
across the mountains, at least none of those gross commodities, which
are the staple of North America; and they are as inconvenient to have
any thing carried from them, nigh two thousand miles, down the river
Ohio, and then by the Missisippi. For that reason those countries, which
we look upon to be the most convenient, are the most inconvenient to
us of any, although they join upon our present settlements. It is for
these reasons, that the first settlements we make beyond the mountains,
that is, beyond those we are now possessed of, should be upon the
Missisippi, as we have said, convenient to the navigation of that river;
and in time those new settlements may come to join to our present
plantations; and we may by that means reap the benefit of all those
inland parts of North America, by means of the navigation of the
Missisippi, which will be secured by this post at the Forks. If that is not
done, we cannot see how any of those inland parts of America, and the
territories of the Ohio, which were the great objects of the present war,
can ever be of any use to Britain, as the inhabitants of all those
countries can otherwise have little or no correspondence with it.

IV. This famous river, the Missisippi, is navigable upwards of two
thousand miles, to the falls of St. Anthony in latitude 45°, the only fall
we know in it, which is 16 degrees of latitude above its mouth; and
even above that fall, our author tells us, there is thirty fathom of water
in the river, with a proportionate breadth. About one thousand miles
from its mouth it receives the river Ohio, which is navigable one
thousand miles farther, some say one thousand five hundred, nigh to its
source, not far from Lake Ontario in New York; in all which space
there is but one fall or rapide in the Ohio, and that navigable both up
and down, at least in canoes. This fall is three hundred miles from the
Missisippi, and one thousand three hundred from the sea, with five
fathom of water up to {xii} it. The other large branches of the Ohio, the
river of the Cherokees, and the Wabache, afford a like navigation, from
lake Erie in the north to the Cherokees in the south, and from thence to
the bay of Mexico, by the Missisippi: not to mention the great river
Missouri, which runs to the north-west parts of New Mexico, much
farther than we have any good accounts of that continent. From this it
appears, that the Missouri affords the most extensive navigation of any
river we know; so that it may justly be compared to an inland sea,
which spreads over nine tenths of all the continent of North America;
all which the French pretended to lay claim to, for no other reason but
because they were possessed of a paltry settlement at the mouth of this
river.
If those things are considered, the importance of the navigation of the
Missisippi, and of a port at the mouth of it, will abundantly appear.
Whatever that navigation is, good or bad, it is the only one for all the
interior parts of North America, which are as large as a great part of
Europe; no part of which can be of any service to Britain, without the
navigation of the Missisippi, and settlements upon it. It is not without
reason then, that we say, whoever are possessed of this river, and of the
vast tracts of fertile lands upon it, must in time command that continent,
and the trade of it, as well as all the natives in it, by the supplies which
this navigation will enable them to furnish those people. By those
means, if the French, or any others, are left in possession of the
Missisippi, while we neglect it, they must command all that continent
beyond the Apalachean mountains, and disturb our settlements much
more than ever they did, or were able to do; the very thing they

engaged in this war to accomplish, and we to prevent.
The Missisippi indeed is rapid for twelve hundred miles, as far as to the
Missouri, which makes it difficult to go up the river by water. For that
reason the French have been used to quit