Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/83

Rh Indians, among whom the building of mounds was a lost art, is exceedingly hard to draw.

These quotations give some evidence that the builders of our earliest archæological works were well acquainted with the high grounds. It is not apparent now that in any signal instance there exists evidence of a reliable character that any watershed was a highway; all we are seeking to show now is the very general fact that these people lived and moved and had their being often far inland on the heads of the little streams which never in historic times have served the purpose of navigation, and that here many of their works are found on the high grounds where it is sure all previous races have made their roads.

Now, it has been suggested already that lines of land travel have varied little since the time the buffalo and Indian marked out the best general courses across the continent. Mr. Benton said that the buffalo blazed the way for the railroad to the Pacific. In a general way this has been the rule throughout our history; the first routes chosen have often proved the best the tripod