n the Juniata. A large body of French and Indians attacked
it in August while most of the garrison were absent protecting the
farmers at their harvest; they set it on fire, and, in spite of a most
gallant resistance by the young lieutenant left in command, took it, and
killed all but one of the defenders.[446]

[Footnote 443: In the public Record Office, _America and West Indies_,
LXXXII., is a manuscript map showing the positions of such of these
posts as were north of Virginia. They are thirty-five in number, from
the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.]

[Footnote 444: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 76.]

[Footnote 445: _Washington to Morris,--April, 1756_.]

[Footnote 446: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 232, 242; _Pennsylvania
Archives_, II. 744.]

What sort of resistance the Pennsylvanian borderers would have made
under political circumstances less adverse may be inferred from an
exploit of Colonel John Armstrong, a settler of Cumberland. After the
loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three
hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest
of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne
and Venango. Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place
was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French. Here, too,
lived the redoubted chief called Captain Jacobs, the terror of the
English border. Armstrong set out from Fort Shirley, the farthest
outpost, on the last of August, and, a week after, was within six miles
of the Indian town. By rapid marching and rare good luck, his party had
escaped discovery. It was ten o'clock at night, with a bright moon. The
guides were perplexed, and knew neither the exact position of the place
nor the paths that led to it. The adventurers threaded the forest in
single file, over hills and through hollows, bewildered and anxious,
stopping to watch and listen. At length they heard in the distance the
beating of an Indian drum and the whooping of warriors in the war-dance.
Guided by the sounds, they cautiously moved forward, till those in the
front, scrambling down a rocky hill, found themselves on the banks of
the Alleghany, about a hundred rods below Kittanning. The moon was near
setting; but they could dimly see the town beyond a great intervening
field of corn. "At that moment," says Armstrong, "an Indian whistled in
a very singular manner, about thirty perches from