Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/30

26 Old residents along our greater streams are often familiar with a number of mouths of the smaller streams. All this greatly affected the travel on the old thoroughfares where the bars beneath the water were the only bridges.

Over some of the small streams and across such bogs as could not be skirted, the first thoroughfares were supported by logs laid closely together, but this was an innovation very seldom found on purely Indian trails. So far as the records go, there is almost no testimony to show that the red men did anything at all to the beds of their little roads. When wet ground was encountered, the Indian either skirted it on surrounding higher land, or plunged recklessly through it—as also did George Roger Clark's brave army which captured the Illinois forts from the British in the Revolutionary War, after wading through "drowned lands of the Wabash." The need of bridges came with the wheeled vehicles, and of these the Indian knew nothing. Two poles which were bound to each side of his pony and dragged behind on the ground was his only "wagon;" and goods