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Rh between such works as these, placed without any seeming regard for the larger water-ways, these mound-building Indians must have had great thoroughfares along the summits of the watersheds. About these earthworks they constructed great, graded roadways, commensurate with the size of the works of which they were a necessary part, but so far as we know these early peoples built no roads between their forts or between their villages. They made no thoroughfares.

It was for the great game animals to mark out what became known as the first thoroughfares of America. The plunging buffalo, keen of instinct, and nothing if not a utilitarian, broke great roads across the continent on the summits of the watersheds, beside which the first Indian trails were but traces through the forests. Heavy, fleet of foot, capable of covering scores of miles a day, the buffalo tore his roads from one feeding-ground to another, and from north to south, on the high grounds; here his roads were swept clear of débris in summer, and of snow in winter. They mounted the heights and descended from