George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

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Chapter 5:

How far America had achieved independence at the time of the French alliance.

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July—September, 1778.

confined between ridges three miles apart, the

Chap. V.} 1778.

Susquehanna, for a little more than twenty miles, winds through the valley of Wyoming. Abrupt rocks, rent by tributary streams, rise on the east, while the western declivities are luxuriantly fertile. Connecticut, whose charter from Charles the Second was older than that of Pennsylvania, using its prior claim to lands north of the Mamaroneck river, had colonized this beautiful region and governed it as its county of Westmoreland. The settlements, begun in 1754, increased in numbers and wealth till their annual tax amounted to two thousand pounds in Connecticut currency. In the winter of 1776, the people aided Washington with two companies of infantry, though their men were all needed to protect their own homes. Knowing the alliance of the British with the Six Nations, they built a line of ten forts as places of refuge.