All the boats did not go down to Oswego and lake Ontario. Some turned and entered the Seneca river, following its slow and winding waters to the country now lying between Syracuse and Rochester. But these boats were not equal to the traffic, for the new farms were producing grain to be transported, and the people needed many articles from the older towns on the Atlantic coast. Hence about a dozen years after Hugh White built his first cabin by the river, the state legislature took up the question of transportation and built a great road, a hundred miles long, from Fort Schuyler, or the future Utica, to Geneva, at the foot of Seneca lake. The road as laid out was six rods wide. It was improved for a width of four rods by the use of gravel and logs where the ground was soft and swampy, as much of it was in those days, being flat and shaded by trees. Over the famous Genesee road, as it was called, thousands of people went not only to the rich valley of the Genesee in western New York but also on to Ohio, and even to the prairies of the Mississippi river. Genesee street in Utica and Genesee street in Syracuse are parts of this road. The historian tells of it as a triumph, for it was an Indian path in June, and before September was over a stage had started at Fort Schuyler, and on the afternoon of the third day had deposited its four passengers at the hotel in Geneva. After this wagons and stages began to run frequently between Albany and Geneva. A wagon could carry fourteen barrels of flour eastward, and in about a month could return to Geneva from Albany with a load of needed supplies. In five weeks, one winter, five hundred and seventy sleighs carrying families passed through Geneva to lands farther west. Geneva was quite a metropolis in those days, when there was nothing but woods where Syracuse and Rochester now are. Regular markets were held there, for there were fine farms and orchards about the beautiful shores of Seneca lake. It is recorded as remarkable that one settler had “dressed up” an old Indian orchard and made “one hundred barrels of cyder.” We might think that the founders of the city of Rochester would have come in by the Genesee road, but they did not. Far to the south, at Hagerstown in Maryland, a country already old, lived Colonel Rochester. He heard of the Genesee lands and at last bought, with his partners, a hundred acres by the falls, where the city now stands. When the little family procession passed down the street and entered upon the long journey up the Susquehanna valley to western New York, Rochester’s friends in Hagerstown wept to see him go. They thought that he had thrown his money away in buying swamp lands where only mosquitoes, rattlesnakes, and bears could live, but he saw farther than they did. If he had been unwilling to take any risk, he would never have laid out the first streets of the prosperous city which now bears his name. [Illustration: FIG. 9. OLD FORT JOHNSON, AMSTERDAM, NEW YORK