e brooks being branches of
Deerfield River. The land this day was some of the best of Land and for
three miles together. The last year Pigeons' nests were so thick that
500 might have been told on the beech trees at One time, and they could
have been counted on the Hemlocks as well, I believe three thousand at
one turn Round. The snow was for ye most part three feet deep, the
weather was fair and wind Northwest."

Although Hazen named the last mountain on his line where he supposed the
eastern line of New York, would ultimately run "Mount Belcher," in honor
of the Governor who had commissioned him to lay it, the just
unpopularity of the line itself and Belcher's connection with it
immediately caused his recall from his government, and the appointment
of William Shirley in his stead. Belcher was Massachusetts born; while
Shirley, though British born, became one of the ablest and most
successful of all the colonial governors of Massachusetts. The building
of Fort Shirley in 1744 and the naming it after the new Governor, as
well as the building a little later of the two forts to the
westward,--Fort Pelham in Rowe and Fort Massachusetts in what is now
North Adams,--all within a couple of miles of the new boundary line,
showed a concern of the colony for its now greatly curtailed northern
limits, as well as a much greater concern for the defence of the
scattered settlements west of the Connecticut river from the French and
Indians, who had several well-trod war-paths to the English settlements
on the Connecticut and the Deerfield.

But, after all, the route by the Hoosac River had been and continued the
main path from Canada to New England for the French and their savage
Indian allies. Whether they came down the Hudson to the mouth of the
Hoosac at Schaghticoke, or struck that river on the flank at Eagle
Bridge, there was a well-beaten trail--the old Mohawk trail--along the
north bank of that river all the way from Schaghticoke to what is now
North Adams; and, in continuation of that river trail, the "old Indian
path" over the Hoosac Mountain, directly over the line of the present
Hoosac Tunnel, led down to the upper reaches of the Deerfield river and
so down to the Connecticut at old Deerfield. It became, therefore, of
great moment to Massachusetts to defend the line of the Deerfield in the
French and Indian war of 1744-48. A few private houses were fortified in
what is now Bernardston, and two or three more