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48 The change was not more striking than was the need for it. All the terrifying scenes in Virginia were reproduced in Pennsylvania; the savages poured through the mountain gaps and fell with unparalleled fury upon a hundred defenseless settlements. Pennsylvania had not expanded further at this time than to the Blue Mountains. Her frontier was not, therefore, nearly as broad as Virginia's, and the frontier firing-line was not so far removed from the populated districts. At the same time it is probable that the Indians from Logstown and Kittanning could get a scalp quicker (so far as distance was concerned) from Pennsylvania than from Virginia—and the French paid as much for one as for the other!

Late in 1756 the Pennsylvania Assembly, now awakened to the condition of affairs caused by their shortsighted, prejudiced policy, took the matter of protection of the frontier into their own hands. Failing to furnish the ounce of prevention, they came quickly with the pound of cure. A chain of forts was planned which, stretching along the barrier wall of the Blue Moun-