mber, with loopholes, a projecting upper story
like a block house, and sometimes a flanker at one or more of
the corners. In the more considerable settlements the largest
of these fortified houses was occupied in time of danger by
armed men and served as a place of refuge for the neighbors.

Into these places, in days of alarm, were crowded the outlying settlers,
just as was the case in later times in the Kentucky "stations."

In spite of such frontier conditions, the outlying towns continued to
multiply. Between 1720 and the middle of the century, settlement crept
up the Housatonic and its lateral valley into the Berkshires. About 1720
Litchfield was established; in 1725, Sheffield; in 1730, Great
Barrington; and in 1735 a road was cut and towns soon established
between Westfield and these Housatonic settlements, thus uniting them
with the older extensions along the Connecticut and its tributaries.

In this period, scattered and sometimes unwelcome Scotch-Irish
settlements were established, such as that at Londonderry, New
Hampshire, and in the Berkshires, as well as in the region won in King
Philip's War from the Nipmucks, whither there came also Huguenots.[72:1]

In King George's War, the Connecticut River settlers found their
frontier protection in such rude stockades as those at the sites of
Keene, of Charlestown, New Hampshire (Number Four), Fort Shirley at the
head of Deerfield River (Heath), and Fort Pelham (Rowe); while Fort
Massachusetts (Adams) guarded the Hoosac gateway to the Hoosatonic
Valley. These frontier garrisons and the self-defense of the
backwoodsmen of New England are well portrayed in the pages of
Parkman.[72:2] At the close of the war, settlement again expanded into
the Berkshires, where Lennox, West Hoosac (Williamstown), and Pittsfield
were established in the middle of the century. Checked by the fighting
in the last French and Indian War, the frontier went forward after the
Peace of Paris (1763) at an exceptional rate, especially into Vermont
and interior New Hampshire. An anonymous writer gives a contemporary
view of the situation on the eve of the Revolution:[72:3]

The richest parts remaining to be granted are on the northern
branches of the Connecticut river, towards Crown Point where
are great districts of fertile soil still unsettled. The North
part of New Hampshire, the province of Maine, and the
territory of Sagadahock have but few sett