Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 11).djvu/21

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FROM TRAIL TO TURNPIKE
17

is lulled by the lapsing of those leaves as if by the roar of that cataract.

Yet the old trail, unlike our most modern roads, kept to the high ground; even in low places it seemed to attempt a double-bow knot in keeping to the points of highest altitude. But when once on the hills, the vista presented varied only with the altitude, save where hidden by the foliage. We do not choose the old "ridge roads" today for the view to be obtained, and we look continually up while the old-time traveler so often looked down. As we have hinted, elsewhere, many of our pioneer battles—those old battles of the trails—will be better understood when the position of the attacking armies is understood to have been on lower levels, the rifles shooting upward, the enemy often silhouetted against the very sky-line.

But the one characteristic to which, ordinarily, there was no exception, was the narrowness of these ancient routes. The Indian did not travel in single file because there was advantage in that formation; it was because his only routes were trails which he never widened or improved;