8. The command of the British naval forces was now transferred to Admiral Byron. Early in October a band of incendiaries, led by Colonel Ferguson, burned the American ships at Little Egg Harbor. In the preceding July, Major John Butler, in command of sixteen hundred royalists, Canadians, and Indians, marched into the valley of Wyoming, Pennsylvania. The settlement was defenceless. On the approach of the tories and savages, a few militia, old men, and boys, rallied to protect their homes. A battle was fought, and the patriots were routed. The fugitives fled to a fort, which was crowded with women and children. Honorable terms were promised by Butler, and the garrison capitulated. On the 5th of July the gates were opened and the barbarians entered. Immediately they began to plunder and butcher. Nearly all the prisoners fell under the hatchet and the scalping-knife. [Sidenote: =Massacre at Cherry Valley.=] 9. In November there was a similar massacre at Cherry Valley, New York. The invaders were led by Joseph Brandt, chief of the Mohawks, and Walter Butler, a son of Major John Butler. The people of Cherry Valley were driven from their homes; women and children were tomahawked and scalped; and forty prisoners dragged into captivity. To avenge these outrages, an expedition was sent against the savages on the Susquehanna; and they were made to feel the terrors of war. [Sidenote: =George Rogers Clark in the West.=] 10. In the spring of 1778, Major George Rogers Clark, who three years previously had descended the Ohio River with a single companion, from Pittsburgh to the Falls of the Ohio, organized an expedition against the British posts on the Wabash and Mississippi rivers. All the country northwest of the river Ohio was at this time under British authority, but the scattered white inhabitants were nearly all French. The most important post was the town of Vincennes, in what was afterwards the Territory of Indiana. Major Clark gathered his forces on Corn Island, in the Ohio, between the present cities of Louisville and Jeffersonville. The regiment was made up of backwoods militiamen and hunters from Kentucky and the Upper Ohio Valley. [Illustration: Attack on Vincennes.] 11. Major Clark first descended the Ohio to a suitable point, and landed in what was afterwards the Territory of Illinois. From this point he marched across the country to the mouth of the Kaskaskia River, where, on the 4th of July, 1778, he surprised and captured the town of Kaskaskia from the British. Here he divided his forces, and sent one division against the British post of Cahokia, opposite St. Louis. This place also was surprised and taken. Soon afterwards the French inhabitants of Vincennes rose against the British garrison, and took possession of the town. But Governor Hamilton, of Detroit, came down later in the year, and the British authority was restored. [Sidenote: =The Capture of Vincennes.=]