untain the country was
depopulated, save a few families on the South Branch of the Potomac and
on the Cacapehon. About the close of April the French and Indians
returned to Fort Du Quesne laden with plunder, prisoners, and scalps.

Governor Dinwiddie recommended to the board of trade an extensive cordon
of forts, to cover the entire frontier of the colonies from Crown Point
to the country of the Creek Indians. His project was to pay for these
forts and support their garrisons by a land and poll tax, levied on all
the colonies by an act of parliament. Washington advised that Virginia
should guard her frontier by additional forts about fifteen miles apart.
Fort Loudoun was erected at Winchester, the key of that region, under
his superintendence. It was a square with four bastions; the batteries
mounted twenty-four guns; a well was sunk, mostly through a bed of
limestone; the barracks were sufficient for four hundred and fifty men.
Vestiges of this fortification still remain. Winchester, after the
erection of Fort Loudoun, increased rapidly, owing to its being the
rendezvous of the Virginia troops: in 1759 it contained two hundred
houses.

It is remarkable that as late as the year 1756, when the colony was a
century and a half old, the Blue Ridge of mountains was virtually the
western boundary of Virginia, and great difficulty was found in
completing a single regiment for the protection of the inhabitants of
the border country from the cruel irruptions of the Indians. Yet at this
time the population of the colony was estimated at two hundred and
ninety-three thousand, of whom one hundred and seventy-three thousand
were white, and one hundred and twenty thousand black, and the militia
were computed at thirty-five thousand fit to bear arms.

Dinwiddie wrote to Fox, (father of Charles James,) one of the
secretaries of state: "We dare not venture to part with any of our white
men any distance, as we must have a watchful eye over our negro slaves,
who are upwards of one hundred thousand." Some estimated them at one
hundred and fifty thousand, equal in number to the whites, but the
smaller estimate is probably more correct. The increase of the blacks
was rapid, and many lamented that the mother country should suffer such
multitudes to be brought from Africa to gratify the African Company,
"and overrun a dutiful colony." As to the question whether enslaving the
negroes is consistent with Christianity, the Rev. Peter Fontaine
r