Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/69

Rh During a warfare such as this, the regular parties of miners would go to the mines, for the roads could be kept open, even should an enemy cross the well-beaten paths." Here a scholar of reputation gives the strongest kind of evidence in a belief that overland routes of travel were in existence and were employed in prehistoric times—by incidentally referring to them while discussing another question. It is difficult to think of any possible alternative. The verdict of history is all against another.

Assuming, then, that overland routes of travel were used by this earliest of American races of which we have any real knowledge, it is to the purpose of our study to consider where such routes were laid.

The one law which has governed land travel throughout history is the law of least resistance, or least elevation. "An easy trail to high ground" is a colloquial expression common in the Far West, but there has been a time when it was as common to Pennsylvania and Ohio as it is common today along the great stretches of the