low grounds, preferring even difficult climbs to passage-ways through soft ground; we have made one quotation, from Dr. Walker's Journal, which notes that one "Buffaloe Road" which he followed afforded an "Ascent and Descent tollerably easie."[1]
The three great overland routes from the Atlantic seaboard into the Central West were undoubtedly first opened by the buffalo; one was the course through central New York followed afterward by the Erie canal and the New York Central railway; the second from the Potomac through southwestern Pennsylvania to the headwaters of the Ohio; the third the famous route through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
These three routes led to the northern, the central, and the southern portions of the great Ohio basin. It is certain that the two latter routes were great buffalo migration routes and there is little doubt that the route through New York was a buffalo thoroughfare. There were lesser thoroughfares which, though latterly known as Indian trails, were undoubtedly paths of
- ↑ First Explorations of Kentucky (Filson Club Pub. No. 13), p. 47.
