From Pittsburg, through bold and pleasing scenery, we ascend the Allegheny River, the broad channel flowing grandly around stately bends enclosed between high hills. Thirty miles above Pittsburg the Kiskiminetas comes in, and in a region of coal mines and furnaces is found the town of Kittanning, which retains the name of the Indian village standing there in Colonial days. This original Indian village was attacked by Colonel Armstrong and three hundred troops at dawn on August 8, 1757, and the Indians, who sided with the French, refusing to surrender, they were pretty much all killed and their village burnt. Armstrong's name is preserved in the county. Beyond is Brady's Bend, a great curve of the river, and here are seen the derricks of many deserted oil wells, as the farther journey above for miles also discloses. This was the Modoc oil district. The Morrison well was struck in 1872, yielding five hundred barrels daily, and immediately a town was laid out, not inappropriately called Greece City, and it soon had a large population. This was a prolific oil region at one time, and back from the river were the well-known oleaginous towns of Modoc City, Karns City and Petrolia. The Allegheny River gradually leads us up to Venango County, which was the chief oil region. Franklin, the capital of the county, has about five thousand inhabitants, and is built at the mouth of French Creek, the site of the old French Fort Venango, which Indian word meant "a guiding mark on a tree." It stood on a commanding ridge, and was one of the chain of posts the French built from the lakes across to the Ohio, to hold their possessions, dating from 1753. The French had a large garrison there, but after Canada was captured the English got possession, and in 1763 it was the scene of a terrible massacre, the Indians taking it, murdering the entire garrison, and slowly roasting the commandant to death.