system, and the numerous campaigns of the English projected against Fort Niagara until its capture in 1759 are evidence of its strategic position and the importance of the little worn road it guarded.
Once beyond the Niagara portage Céloron's attention was turned to the rival routes from Lake Erie to La Belle Rivière. There were at least five passageways well-known to the Indians. Of these the French knew very little, for, having found the Mississippi, they had been less interested in this branch of it. But now that the English were claiming and even settling the land along its half-known shores it was time they were enforcing their claims. So Céloron made for the first portage southward in order to strike the Ohio on its headwaters. This was the Chautauqua Lake portage from Chautauqua Creek—which the French knew as "Rivière aux Pommes"—six miles by land from the present Barcelona, New York, to Lake Chautauqua. From the seventeenth to the twenty-second of July was spent in making the difficult march over what has long been known as the "Old Portage Road." Bon-
