Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 4).djvu/23

Rh could only reach the French on the Ohio by ascending the Potomac to a point near the mouth of Wills Creek, whence an Indian path led northwestward over a hundred miles to the Monongahela, which was descended to its junction with the Ohio. The two former routes, to Lake Champlain and to Lake Ontario, were, with short portages, practically all-water routes, over which provisions and army stores could be transported northward to the zone into which the French had likewise come by water-routes. The critical points of both routes of both hostile nations were the strategic portages where land travel was rendered imperative by the difficulties of navigation. On these portages many forts instantly sprang into existence—in some instances mere posts and entrepôts, in some cases strongly fortified citadels.

The route from Virginia to the Ohio Valley, finally made historic by the English General Braddock, was by far the most difficult of all the ways by which the English could meet the French. The Potomac was navigable for small boats at favorable seasons for varying distances; but