Gorge, the outstanding
feature in the picture will be the Appalachian barrier that separates
the interior from the Atlantic coast. To the north lie the Adirondacks
and the Berkshire Hills, hedging New England in close to the ocean. Two
glittering waterways lie east and west of these heights--the Connecticut
and the Hudson. Upon the valleys of these two rivers converged the
two deeply worn pathways of the Puritan, the Old Bay Path and the
Connecticut Path. By way of Westfield River, that silver tributary
which joins the Connecticut at Springfield, Massachusetts, the Bay Path
surmounted the Berkshire highlands and united old Massachusetts to the
upper Hudson Valley near Fort Orange, now Albany.

Here, north of the Catskills, the Appalachian barrier subsides and gives
New York a supreme advantage over all the other Atlantic States--a level
route to the Great Lakes and the West. The Mohawk River threads the
smiling landscape; beyond lies the "Finger Lake country" and the valley
of the Genesee. Through this romantic region ran the Mohawk Trail,
sending offshoots to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, to the
Susquehanna, and to the Allegheny. A few names have been altered in the
course of years--the Bay Path is now the Boston and Albany Railroad,
the Mohawk Trail is the New York Central, and Fort Orange is Albany--and
thus we may tell in a dozen words the story of three centuries.

Upon Fort Orange converged the score of land and water pathways of the
fur trade of our North. These Indian trade routes were slowly widened
into colonial roads, notably the Mohawk and Catskill turnpikes, and
these in turn were transformed into the Erie, Lehigh, Nickel Plate, and
New York Central railways. But from the day when the canoe and the keel
boat floated their bulky cargoes of pelts or the heavy laden Indian
pony trudged the trail, the routes of trade have been little or nothing
altered.

Traversing the line of the Alleghanies southward, the eye notes first
the break in the wall at the Delaware Water Gap, and then that long arm
of the Susquehanna, the Juniata, reaching out through dark Kittanning
Gorge to its silver playmate, the dancing Conemaugh. Here amid its leafy
aisles ran the brown and red Kittanning Trail, the main route of the
Pennsylvania traders from the rich region of York, Lancaster, and
Chambersburg. On this general alignment the Broadway Limited flies today
toward Pittsburgh and Chicago. A little to the south another imp