the Hudson to Lake Ontario; the old landward trail to Niagara not being opened by an army.[1]
Yet Braddock's Road, cut in 1755, was quite filled up with undergrowth in 1758 as we have noted. It was "a brush wood, by the sprouts from the old stumps."[2] In those primeval forests a road narrowed very fast, and quickly became impassable if not constantly cared for. The storms of a single fall or spring month and the heavy clouds of snow on the trees in winter kept the ground beneath well littered with broken limbs and branches. Here and there great trees were thrown by the winds across the traveled ways. And so a military road over which thousands may have passed would become, if left untouched, quite as impassable as the blindest trail in a short time.
Other Indian trails which armies never traversed became slightly widened by agents of land companies, as in the case of Boone blazing his way through Cumber-
