This officer's opinion, already quoted, that the only forts worth the candle west of the Susquehanna were the three or four which fortified the main route westward from Carlisle to Raystown, appears to have met the approval of those in authority by 1757; on April 10, Governor Denny wrote to the Proprietaries: "Four Forts only were to remain over Susquehannah, viz., Lyttleton, Loudoun, Shippensburg, and Carlisle."[52] If this is considered a backward step it must also be considered as a concentration of energy in a most telling manner. If the frontier from the Susquehanna to the Maryland line could not be held at every point the decision seems to have been that the line of the old road must be secured at all costs, whereupon all the public forts were abandoned save the four which guarded this western highway. But the decision meant more than this. It was in fact an offensive measure. Instead of holding a line of forts at the mountain gaps as a shield to the settlements, the line of the roadway westward was to be protected and even prolonged--a bristling sword-point stretching over the Alleghenies into the very heart of the French and Indian region. This is proved by the building of a new fort yet further west than Lyttleton--at Raystown, near the point where Burd's road, cut in 1755 toward the Youghiogheny, left the Old Trading Path. This significant undertaking was evidently on the tapis early in the winter. On February 22, Armstrong wrote Burd: "This is all that can possibly be done, before the grass grows and proper numbers unite, except it is agreed to fortify Raystown, of which I, yet, know nothing." On the fifth of May he addressed a letter to the governor in which he said: "... prompts me to propose to your Honour what I have long ago suggested, to the late Governor and gentlemen commissioners, that is the building a fort at Raystown without which the King's business and the country's safety can never be effected to the westward.... 'Tis true this service will require upwards of five hundred men, as no doubt they will be attacked if any power be at Fort Duquesne, because this will be a visible, large and direct stride to that place." Thus it is clear that every step westward on the new-cut roadway from Fort Lyttleton toward Raystown was a step toward Fort Duquesne, and every fortification built on this track was a "visible, large and direct" stroke at the power of France on the Ohio. A fort was erected at Raystown within the year. CHAPTER III THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758