were to remain over Susquehannah, viz., Lyttleton, Loudoun, Shippensburg, and Carlisle."[1] If this is considered a backward step it must also be considered as a concentration of energy in a most telling manner. If the frontier from the Susquehanna to the Maryland line could not be held at every point the decision seems to have been that the line of the old road must be secured at all costs, whereupon all the public forts were abandoned save the four which guarded this western highway. But the decision meant more than this. It was in fact an offensive measure. Instead of holding a line of forts at the mountain gaps as a shield to the settlements, the line of the roadway westward was to be protected and even prolonged—a bristling sword-point stretching over the Alleghenies into the very heart of the French and Indian region. This is proved by the building of a new fort yet further west than Lyttleton—at Raystown, near the point where Burd's road, cut in 1755 toward the Youghiogheny, left the Old Trading Path. This significant undertak-
- ↑ Pennsylvania Archives, vol. iii, p. 119.
