At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there was a riflemaker, probably a German by birth, by name Decherd or Dechert, who began to outline the type of the American squirrel-rifle or hunting-arm. This man had an apprentice, one Mills, with ideas of his own. We see this apprentice and his improved rifle presently in North Carolina; and soon thereafter riflemakers spring up all over the east slope of the Alleghanies, so that as though by magic all our hunters and frontiersmen are equipped with this long rifle, shooting the tiny ball, and shooting it with an accuracy hitherto deemed impossible in the achievements of firearms. Withal we may call this a Southern arm, since New England was later in taking up its use, clinging to the Queen Anne musket when the men of North Carolina and Virginia scorned to shoot a squirrel anywhere except in the head. The first riflemen of the Revolutionary War were Pennsylvanians, Virginians and Marylanders, all Southerners; and deadly enough was their skill with what the English officers called their “cursed widow and orphan makers.” The barrel of the typical rifle of those days was about four feet in length, the stock slender, short and strongly curved, so that the sights came easily and directly up to the level of the eye in aiming. The sights were low and close to the barrel, some pieces being provided with two hind sights, a foot or so apart, so that the marksman might not draw either too fine or too coarse a bead with the low silver or bone crescent of the fore sight. Usually the rear sight was a simple, flat bar, finely notched, and placed a foot or fifteen inches in front of the breech of the barrel, so that the eye should focus easily and sharply at the notch of the rear sight. Such was the care with which the sights were adjusted that the rifleman sometimes put the finishing touches on the notch with so soft a cutting tool as a common pin, working away patiently, a little at a time, lest he should by too great haste go too deep into the rear sight, and so cause the piece to shoot otherwise than “true.” The delicately arranged set-triggers made possible an instantaneous discharge without any appreciable disturbance of the aim when once obtained; and the long distance between the hind sight and fore sight, the steadiness of the piece, owing to its length and weight, the closeness of the line of sight to the line of the trajectory of a ball driven with a relatively heavy powder charge, all conspired to render extreme accuracy possible with this arm, and this accuracy became so general throughout the American frontier that to be a poor rifle shot was to be an object of contempt.