[149] Article 6 of the Treaty of Paris between France and the United States, dated February 6, 1778, ran as follows: ‘The most Christian King renounces for ever the possession of the islands of Bermudas as well as of any part of the continent of America which before the Treaty of Paris in 1763 or in virtue of that treaty were acknowledged to belong to the Crown of Great Britain or to the United States heretofore called British colonies or which are at this time or have lately been under the Power of the King and Crown of Great Britain.’ (_Annual Register_, 1778, p. 341.) [150] Stone’s _Life of Brant_, and among recent books, Halsey’s _Old New York Frontier_, give good accounts of this border war from the American side. Fortunately the subject lies in the main outside the scope of the present book. It would probably be fair to say that there were undoubtedly great and horrible barbarities, not confined to one side only, and on the other hand that there was much exaggeration as, e.g. when Campbell in _Gertrude of Wyoming_ made Joseph Brant, who never took any part at all in the raid, one of the monsters of the story. The Wyoming valley had been colonized from Connecticut and was claimed by and at the time actually incorporated with Connecticut, though geographically within the state of Pennsylvania. The settlers had sent a considerable contingent to Washington’s army and their homes were in consequence but slenderly guarded. On Pownall’s ‘map of the Middle British Colonies in North America’, published March 25, 1776, on the western side of the east branch of the Susquehanna river, appears the following: ‘Colony from Wioming Connecticut.’ In the ‘Topographical Description’ attached to the above map there is the following note at pp. 35-6: ‘This Place and the District is now settled by a populous Colony, which swarmed and came forth from Connecticut. The People of Connecticut say, that their Charter and the grant of Lands under it was prior to that of Pennsylvania; that the grant of Lands to them extended within the Latitudes of their Grant (except where possessed by other powers at that Time) to the South Seas. They allow New York and New Jersey to have been so possessed at the time of their Grant, but say, that their right emerges again at the West boundary of those Provinces. Mr. Penn and the People of Pennsylvania who have taken Grants under him say, that this District is in the very Heart of the Province of Pennsylvania. On this State of Claims the Two Colonies are in actual war, which they have not even remitted against each other here, although united in arms against Great Britain 1775.’ The note is interesting as showing how very far from amicable were the relations of the colonies to each other when the War of Independence broke out, cf. the case of the Vermont settlers and New York referred to at the beginning of this chapter.