The French, finding this a laborious and tedious route, abandoned it for a better one. Where the town of Erie now stands, on the southern shore of the lake of the same name, a small stream flows from the southward into that inland sea. Opposite its mouth is Presque Isle, which protects the locality from the north winds, and, acting as a barrier to the turbulent waves, offers to the mariner a safe port of refuge behind its shores. The French ascended the little stream, and from its banks made a short portage to the Rivire des boeuf, or some tributary of French Creek, and descended it to the Alleghany and the Ohio. This Erie and French River route finally became the military highway of the Canadians to the Ohio Valley, and may be called the second route from Lake Erie. The third route to the Ohio from Lake Erie commenced at the extreme southwestern end of that inland sea. The voyagers entered Maumee Bay and ascended the Maumee River, hauling their birch canoes around the rapids between Maumee City and Perrysburgh, and between Providence and Grand Rapids. Surmounting these obstacles, they reached the site of Fort Wayne, where the St. Joseph and St. Mary rivers unite, and make, according to the author of the "History of the Maumee Valley," the "Maumee," or "Mother of Waters," as interpreted from the Indian tongue. At this point, when ninety-eight miles from Lake Erie, the travellers were forced to make a portage of a mile and a half to a branch called Little River, which they descended to the Wabash, which stream, in the early days of French exploration, was thought to be the main river of the Ohio system. The Wabash is now the boundary line for a distance of two hundred miles between the states of Indiana and Illinois. Following the Wabash, the voyager would enter the Ohio River about one hundred and forty miles above its junction with the Mississippi. The great Indian diplomatist, "Little Turtle," in making a treaty speech in 1795, when confronting Anthony Wayne, insisted that the Fort Wayne portage was the "key or gateway" of the tribes having communication with the inland chain of lakes and the gulf coast. It is now claimed by many persons that this was the principal and favorite route of communication between the high and low latitudes followed by the savages hundreds of years before Europeans commenced the exploration of the great west. There was a fourth route from the north to the tributaries of the Ohio, which was used by the Seneca Indians frequently, though rarely by the whites. It was further east than the three already described. The Genesee River flows into Lake Ontario about midway between its eastern shores and the longitude of the eastern end of Lake Erie. In using this fourth route, the savages followed the Genesee, and made a portage to some one of the affluents of the Alleghany to reach the Ohio River. [Indian in canoe] CHAPTER III. FROM PITTSBURGH TO BLENNERHASSET'S ISLAND