vania nearly on the line separating Ashtabula and Trumbull Counties; and from this point, with many turnings and twistings, it runs southwestward across the State, passing out of it into Indiana in Darke County. About one-fourth of the State is on the northern or short slope, three-fourths on the southern or long slope. The summits of the two canals that connect the lake and the river are less than 400 feet above the lake level, but the highest parts of the "divide" rise to more than three times that elevation. The highest land in the State thus far measured is near the City of Bellefontaine, Logan County. It is 1550 feet above mean tide level. The lowest point is the junction of the Great Miami and Ohio Rivers, 440 feet above the same level. In respect to surface, the State stands midway between the mountainous States of the East and the prairie States of the West. In parts it is level, in parts hilly. In a state of nature much the larger part of its surface was covered with heavy forests, but there were also extensive prairie tracts, found mostly in the northwest. The most southerly point in the State is about 38° 27' north latitude, the most northerly point about 41° 57'; while it is situated between 80° 34′ and 84° 49′ west longitude.

4. Natural Resources.- Few States, if indeed any, surpass Ohio in varied natural resources. The State holds high rank in respect to agricultural productions; different parts present considerable differences of soil. It abounds in mineral wealth-in coal, iron, and quarries of valuable stone; in oil, gas, and salt. The native forests of valuable woods have also contributed

largely to her wealth. And finally, situated as she is

between the Atlantic States and the States of the farther West, and lying as she does between the Northern and Southern systems of waters, she has advantages for carrying on manufactures and commerce such as are enjoyed by few of her sister States.

5. Rank.-Ohio was the fourth new State to enter the Union, and so is the seventeenth in point of number. In respect to size she is the thirty-first State. The State is nearly square; the longest east and west line that can be drawn within her limits is 210 miles, the longest north and south line, 225 miles. The surface embraces 40,760 square miles of territory, or about 26,000,000 acres. But in population and wealth her rank is far higher. In these particulars she stands below only New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. 1890 her total population was 3,672,370, and her total wealth $3,951,382,384.00.

In

Such is a mere glance at Ohio. We are now to take a general view of the history of the State from the earliest times.

CHAPTER II

THE PERIOD OF FRENCH DOMINATION.1

seventeenth 6. Rival Claims to Ohio.- In the sixteenth century English colonists planted themselves firmly on the Atlantic shore, extending from Maine to Georgia.

At the same time the French established themselves securely in the St. Lawrence Valley. Jamestown and Quebec, Plymouth and Montreal, were founded almost at the same time. The King of England claimed the continent back of his colonies to the Pacific Ocean. The King of France asserted a right to the whole region that drains to the sea by the St. Lawrence. The English colonists, being shut in to the seaboard by the Appalachian Mountains, for a long time took little interest in the interior of the continent, and really did nothing to explore it. The French colonists, on the other hand, being favored by the great system of waters on which they had established themselves, pushed into the Northwest and discovered the Great Lakes and the parts contiguous to them. Nor was this all. Hearing from the Indians whom they met on the Upper Lakes of a "great water" to the west, they crossed the "divides" separating the streams flowing to the Lakes from the streams flowing to the

1 The field of history covered by this brief chapter has been admirably treated by Francis Parkman in his series of volumes entitled "England and France in North America." See particularly La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West and Montcalm and Wolfe.

west and south and discovered the Mississippi River. This they did as early as 1672. The King of France now asserted a right to the great valley drained by the Mississippi, and so to the State of Ohio, which lies within the two systems of waters.

7. The French Excluded From Ohio. But there were good reasons why the French, for a long time, did not take possession of, or even explore, the country that lies between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. The powerful Indian confederacy known as the Iroquois, occupying Central and Western New York, controlled the southern shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie and Niagara River, and so commanded all the approaches to the Upper Ohio. In fact, their war parties ranged far to the west and south, and the Confederacy claimed as its own much of the region south of the Great Lakes. The Iroquois were the deadly enemies of the French, and more than once they seemed on the point of destroying all their settlements in Canada. So the French, in pushing their explorations in the Northwest, did not at first ascend the St. Lawrence and the Lower Lakes, but rather kept far to the north out of harm's way. This they did by ascending the Ottawa River, which enters the St. Lawrence just above Montreal, and then descending the waters beyond to Georgian Bay. Besides, this gave them a much shorter route than the one by the Upper St. Lawrence and the Lower Lakes. These facts explain how it was that the French reached the Mississippi by the Wisconsin and the Illinois, and not by the Ohio. They also explain how it was that the French were almost wholly ignorant of the country between Lake

Erie and the Ohio River long after they had quite fully explored and mapped much of Michigan and Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Michigan, the French reached by the Ottawa River, Georgian Bay, and Lake Huron, and Indiana by Lake Michigan; thus coming in, as it were, by the back door instead of the front one.

8. Other Discoveries.-There is indeed a report that La Salle, the great French explorer, coming from the head of Lake Ontario, crossed to the Upper Ohio and descended that stream as far as Louisville, Kentucky, in the winter of 1669-70, but the report is somewhat doubtful. English and Dutch traders of New York sometimes made their way into the region of the Lakes, but they added nothing to the current knowledge of the country. There are also stories of Virginians crossing the mountains and reaching the Ohio at an early day, but these stories are even more doubtful than the story about La Salle. None of these explorations, if such there were, left any permanent trace in history. The only reports of the Great West that reached the world were those made by the French; and these, down to the middle of the eighteenth century, said little about Ohio.1

9. French Policy.- The French promptly took possession of the vast regions in the West that they had discovered. They planted their establishments,

1 The maps of the Ohio region made previous to the French and Indian War show how little was known about it. Some times the Ohio and the Wabash are one stream flowing nearly east and west, thus nearly obliterating Ohio. Evans and Mitchell, whose maps were published in 1755, give Lake Erie an almost due east and west direction.