Ordinarily the buffalo laid out his road with commendable sagacity, "usually choosing the easiest grades and the most direct courses, so that a buffalo trail can be depended upon as affording the most feasible road possible through the region it traverses."[125] This was because their weight demanded the most stable courses and they were thus very sure of avoiding low grounds, preferring even difficult climbs to passage-ways through soft ground; we have made one quotation, from Dr. Walker's _Journal_, which notes that one "Buffaloe Road" which he followed afforded an "Ascent and Descent tollerably easie."[126] The three great overland routes from the Atlantic seaboard into the Central West were undoubtedly first opened by the buffalo; one was the course through central New York followed afterward by the Erie canal and the New York Central railway; the second from the Potomac through southwestern Pennsylvania to the headwaters of the Ohio; the third the famous route through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. These three routes led to the northern, the central, and the southern portions of the great Ohio basin. It is certain that the two latter routes were great buffalo migration routes and there is little doubt that the route through New York was a buffalo thoroughfare. There were lesser thoroughfares which, though latterly known as Indian trails, were undoubtedly paths of the buffalo. One of these was the famous Kittaning Path from the headwaters of the Juniata to the Allegheny, the route of the Pennsylvania railway across the Alleghanies; another was the old trail through Carlisle and Bedford, Pennsylvania, later known as Forbes's route to Pittsburg. Still another was the well-worn path over the Alleghany divide by way of Hot Springs, the present route of the Chesapeake and Ohio railway.[127] In the Central West the greater migratory routes were, in Kentucky the route from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio by way of the great licks; in West Virginia the course from the head of New River down the valley of the Great Kanawha, also on the watershed from the Monongahela to the Ohio by way of Middle Island creek and Dry Ridge; in Ohio the great trail from the "Forks of the Ohio" (Pittsburg) across the watershed which divides the streams (in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) which flow into the Ohio from those which flow into the lakes; the trails up the Muskingum and Scioto and Miami to the lakes, in Pennsylvania the great trail running north and south on the western spurs of the Alleghanies, Chestnut Ridge and its prolongation, Laurel Hill; in Tennessee the great Warrior's Path through Cumberland Gap to the country of the Cherokees and Catawbas.