If in imagination one surveys the eastern half of the North
American continent from one of the strategic passageways of the
Alleghanies, say from Cumberland Gap or from above Kittanning
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