Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/23

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NATURE AND USE
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them which has been traversed by tens of thousands until even the passes in the rocks are worn smooth. The valley of the Richelieu heads off the watershed and turns it southwest; we accordingly pass down the Green Mountain range, across the historic path from Otter Creek to the Connecticut, and below Lake George we pass northward across the famous road from the extremity of that lake to the Hudson. Striking northward now we head the Hudson in the Adirondacks and come down upon the strategic watershed between its principal tributary, the Mohawk, and Lake Ontario. The watershed dodges between Wood Creek, which flows northward, and the Mohawk, at Rome, New York, where Fort Stanwix guarded the portage path between these streams. Pressing westward below Seneca Lake and the Genessee, our course takes us north of Lake Chautauqua, where we cross the path over which canoes were borne from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua, and, a few miles westward, we cross the portage path from Lake Erie to Rivière aux Bœufs, a tributary of the Allegheny. Pursuing the height of land