lle, on the confines of Pennsylvania,
an inconsiderable block-house, was surprised by a party of French and
Indians, who made the garrison prisoners, consisting of two-and-twenty
soldiers, with a few women and children. These they loaded with flour
and provisions, and drove them into captivity; but the fort they reduced
to ashes. Many shocking murders were perpetrated upon defenceless
people, without distinction of age or sex, in different parts of the
frontiers; but these outrages were in some measure balanced by the
advantages resulting from a treaty of peace, which the governor of
Pennsylvania concluded with the Delaware Indians, a powerful tribe that
dwell upon the river Sasquehanna, forming, as it were, a line along
the southern skirts of the province. At the same time the governor
of Virginia secured the friendship and alliance of the Cherokees and
Catawbas, two powerful nations adjoining to that colony, who were
able to bring three thousand fighting men into the field. All these
circumstances considered, Great Britain had reason to expect that the
ensuing campaign would be vigorously prosecuted in America, especially
as a fresh reinforcement of troops, with a great supply of warlike
stores, were sent to that country in fourteen transports, under convoy
of two ships of war, which sailed from Cork in Ireland about the
beginning of November.

NAVAL OPERATIONS IN AMERICA.

No action of great importance distinguished the naval transactions of
this year on the side of America. In the beginning of June, captain
Spry, who commanded a small squadron cruising off Louisbourg, in the
island of Cape Breton, took the _Arc en Ciel_, a French ship of fifty
guns, having on board near six hundred men, with a large quantity
of stores and provisions for the garrison. He likewise made prize of
another French ship, with seventy soldiers, two hundred barrels
of powder, two large brass mortars, and other stores of the like
destination. On the twenty-seventh day of July, commodore Holmes, being
in the same latitude, with two large ships and a couple of sloops,
engaged two French ships of the line and four frigates, and obliged them
to sheer off after an obstinate dispute. A great number of privateers
were equipped in this country, as well as in the West India islands
belonging to the crown of Great Britain; and as those seas swarmed
with French vessels, their cruises proved very advantageous to the
adventurers.

TRANSACTI