Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/27

Rh seasons, and a woodsman of the old school knew well what thoroughfares were most endangered by them and laid his courses accordingly.

The nightmare of travelers forest-bound was the passage of streamsthe fords where the woodland thoroughfares left them for a space to the mercy of bogs, morasses, swift tides, quicksands, hidden rocks, sand-bars, and the other uncertainties of the "crossing-place." With an instinct no less shrewd than that displayed on the highland trail, the buffalo and the Indian found with great sagacity the best crossing-places over the streams of America.

One student, at least, wondered for many months why the old trails he studied and traversed always crossed streams just at the mouths of other streams. It seemed to him (as is true of our streams today) that at this very point the deepest water would be encountered. Yet, one item of evidence after another accumulated until the mass of it pointed surely to a law. Some of the more notorious "crossing-places" will be remembered by the casual reader of pioneer