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Rh fortify Wills Creek. Virginia, however, had been assisted from the royal chest, while the assemblies of the other colonies were in the customary state of turmoil, governor against legislature. The intermediate province of Pennsylvania, home of the peaceful Quakers, looked askance upon the darkening war-clouds and had done little or nothing for the protection of her populous frontiers. As a result, therefore, the Virginian route to the French, though longest and most difficult, was made, by the erection of Fort Cumberland at Wills Creek, at once the most conspicuous.

Fort Cumberland, named in honor of the Duke of Cumberland, Captain-general of the English Army, was located on an eminence between Wills Creek and the Potomac, two hundred yards from the former and about four hundred yards from the latter. Its length was approximately two hundred yards and its breadth nearly fifty yards; and "is built," writes an eye-witness in 1755, "by logs driven into the ground, and about 12 feet above it, with embrasures for 12 guns, and 10 mounted 4 pounders, besides stocks for swivels, and