them on the longest slopes, and crossed each stream on the bars at the mouths of its lesser tributaries.
Evidence remains today to show what great thoroughfares these buffalo roads were, for on the summit of many of the greater watersheds may be seen the remains of the old courses, and there the hoofprints of centuries of travel may yet be read. If the summit should be bare of trees, the very contour of the ground may suggest the old-time, deeply-trod roadway; where a forest lies over the summit a remarkably significant open aisle in the woods speaks yet more plainly of the ancient highway, where only shrubs and little trees are found in the center of the track.
It is very wonderful that the buffalo's instinct should have found the very best courses across a continent upon whose thousand rivers such great black forests were thickly strung. Yet it did, as the tripod of the white man has proved; and until the problem of aërial navigation is solved, human intercourse will move largely on paths first marked by the buffalo. It is
