Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/52

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PORTAGE PATHS

wide, open spaces where many a camp has been raised and struck, where assemblies innumerable have been harangued, where a thousand ambuscades have been laid and sprung.

Portage paths crossed the watersheds which were frequently boundary lines. They also connected river valleys which came to be boundary lines. Consequently these routes of travel became themselves, in several instances, important boundaries. This is illustrated by the line decided upon at the Fort Stanwix Treaty; in several instances the territory of the United States has been bounded by a little portage path—such as that between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas Rivers in Ohio—which is now quite forgotten. In this instance the little path is still to be identified from the fact that it was a boundary line for such a length of time that the lands on the eastern and western sides were surveyed by different systems. The "Great Carrying Place" between the Hudson and Lake George was one of the boundaries of the first grant of land made by the Mohawks at Saratoga. At the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, 1785, the