...m Johnson, was the first to engage actively. Fort Niagara stood, as its ruins yet stand, on the fiat and narrow promontory round which the deep and rapid Niagara sweeps into the lower lake. There La Salle , first of Europeans, had driven a light palisade. There Denonville had constructed a fortress and left a garrison for a winter. It commanded the portage between Ontario and Erie, and gave the dom...