been established,
though it was clearly understood by the Indians that all these should
be abandoned as soon as the war was ended. This route began at the
frontier town of Albany. Here the traveller left the clumsy but
comfortable sloop on board which he had perhaps spent a week or more on
the voyage from New York, and embarked in a canoe or flat-boat, which
was laboriously poled against the swift current of the Mohawk river.
Thus he passed the old Dutch town of Schenectady, Johnson Hall and
Johnson Castle, Forts Hunter and Herkimer, and at length reached the
head of river navigation at Fort Stanwix. From here a short portage
through the forest led him to the waters of Wood creek, where he might
again embark and float with the sluggish current to the Royal
Blockhouse on the shore of Oneida lake. Crossing this, and passing
under the walls of Port Brewerton at the source of the Oswego river, he
would descend the swift waters of that stream to Fort Oswego on the
shore of Lake Ontario. From here his course in any direction lay over
the superb waterways of the great inland lakes whose open navigation
was only interrupted by a toilsome portage around the great cataract of
the Niagara river.

Beyond these few isolated dots of white settlements and the slender
lines of communication between them, the whole vast interior country
was buried in the shade of an unbroken forest that swept like a billowy
sea of verdure over plains, hills, valleys, and mountains, screening
the sunlight from innumerable broad rivers and rushing streams, and
spreading its leafy protection over uncounted millions of beasts,
birds, and fishes. Here dwelt the Indian, and before the coming of the
white man the forest supplied all his simple needs. Its gloomy mazes
were threaded in every direction by his trails, deep-trodden by the
feet of many generations, and forming a network of communication
between all villages and places of importance. So carefully did these
narrow highways follow lines of shortest distance and easiest grade,
that when the white man began to lay out his own roads he could do no
better than adopt their suggestions.

With the coming of the whites, the life of the Indian was subjected to
sudden and radical changes. Having learned of the existence and use of
guns, knives, kettles, blankets, and innumerable other things that
appealed to his savage notions of comfort and utility, he must now have
them, and for them would trade fur