Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/82

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76
INDIAN THOROUGHFARES

hundreds of miles on these various Indian paths and I ever love to trace the roadway where it is now the broad travelled road, and where it turns aside in an overgrown and narrow lane which is today almost as neglected and wild as the old path. There still seems to cling to it something of the human interest ever found in a foot-path across a pasture, or up a wooded hill, full of charm, of suggestion, of sentiment."[1]

The Old Connecticut Path was centuries old, no doubt, when it was established as a permanent thoroughfare by the General Court which occurred after the establishment of the Plymouth Path (between the capitals of the two colonies) in 1639.

IROQUOIS TRAIL

The great Iroquois Trail ran from the Hudson to Niagara through the territory of the Six Nations. It marked out what has been since time prehistoric, and is now, one of the great thoroughfares of America. Following the Mohawk river valley it found, near Fort Stanwix (Rome, New York), the great watershed between the

  1. Earle's Stage Coach and Tavern Days, p. 225.