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INDIAN THOROUGHFARES

tations made by the feet of thousands upon thousands of warriors and packhorses which travelled it for an unknown number of years are still plainly visible. We have gone up the Kittanning gorge two or three miles, repeatedly, and looked upon the ruins of old huts, and the road, which evidently never received the impression of a wagon-wheel, and were forcibly struck with the idea that it must once have been traversed, without knowing at the time that it was the famous Kittanning trail. In some places, where the ground was marshy, close to the run, the path is at least twelve inches deep, and the very stones along the road bear the marks of the iron-shod horses of the Indian traders. . . . The path can be traced in various other places, but nowhere so plain as in the Kittanning gorge. This is owing to the fact that one or two other paths led into it, and no improvement has been made in the gorge east of "Hart's Sleeping Place," along the line of the path."[1]

A branch of this great path through central Pennsylvania ran by way of Rea's

  1. Jones's Juniata Valley, pp. 134–136.