Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/140

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136
AMERICAN PORTAGES

Albany through the pine woods to the Mohawk at Schenectady. This carrying place avoided the Ga-ha-oose Falls. At the terminus of the old Indian carrying place on the Hudson, now called Albany, the Dutch, under Hendrick Christiensen, in 1614, built Fort Nassau on Castle Island. . . In 1617 they built another fort at the mouth of the Normanskill, at the old Indian Ta-wa-sent-ha—'the place of the many dead.' In 1623 Fort Orange was built by Adriaen Joris, and eighteen families built their bark huts and spent there the coming winter. . .

"In the year 1662 Arendt van Curler, and other inhabitants of Fort Orange, 'went west' across the old carry through the pines to the rich Mohawk flats and founded a settlement. To this settlement they applied the old Indian name of Albany, calling it Schenectady. From Albany it was the new settlement on the Mohawk beyond the pines. . .

"From Schenectady the western trail ran up the Mohawk to what is now the city of Rome, where there was another carry of a mile in length, to the Wood Creek which