Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/152

all, the remains of Fort Wood Creek alone are visible, save the embankment of Fort Stanwix. Here, three miles out from Rome, where the old portage path used to run, beside the little creek now only a shadow of the oldtime stream, is the interesting star-shaped ruin of Fort Wood Creek, surrounded by a moat still five feet deep. The southern side, as the map shows, (K), was not fortified strongly like the others, as the water of the creek protected it. The dam and floodgate were just beyond the southwestern bastion and the old embankment of the dam can still be traced. The broad pond formed by the dammed water is clearly visible in outline; the present stream runs near the center of it. It was probably seldom in the olden days that the creek was not navigable here; the dam doubtless made it so, for a large part of the year, from Fort Newport downwards. Yet the narrative just quoted affirms that the portage was sometimes "six or eight miles across" in unusually dry seasons. This was certainly prior to the erection of the dams and floodgates, which "saved so much land carriage" according