At the ends of many of the portage paths were to be found busy out-door work-shops in the old days of pirogues and canoes. The trees nearby and far away stood stark and white against the forest green, having lost their coats of bark; many were fallen, and others were tottering. Here and there were scattered the refuse pieces of bark and wood. The ends of portage paths were famous carpenter shops.[17] There were humble libraries here, too. It was while wintering on the Chicago portage that Marquette wrote memoirs of his voyages. In some instances, too, peculiar relics of the old life in the heyday of the canoe have come down to us. The end of the portage path, besides being a camping spot, was the provisioning place. Here food was to be made or to be secured and properly seasoned and packed. At the old French portages stone ovens were erected, in which quantities of bread might be baked before starting on a journey. At either end of the Chautauqua portage between Lake Erie and Lake Chautauqua such little monuments have been discovered. In each case the baking place was a circular piece of masonry of stone laid in strong mortar, three feet in height and three or four feet in diameter.[18] The portages between many waters crossed important transverse watersheds along which coursed the great landward routes of primeval America. Here at the junction of the greater and lesser paths were wide, open spaces where many a camp has been raised and struck, where assemblies innumerable have been harangued, where a thousand ambuscades have been laid and sprung. Portage paths crossed the watersheds which were frequently boundary lines. They also connected river valleys which came to be boundary lines. Consequently these routes of travel became themselves, in several instances, important boundaries. This is illustrated by the line decided upon at the Fort Stanwix Treaty; in several instances the territory of the United States has been bounded by a little portage path--such as that between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas Rivers in Ohio--which is now quite forgotten. In this instance the little path is still to be identified from the fact that it was a boundary line for such a length of time that the lands on the eastern and western sides were surveyed by different systems. The "Great Carrying Place" between the Hudson and Lake George was one of the boundaries of the first grant of land made by the Mohawks at Saratoga. At the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, 1785, the western boundary line of the United States included the courses of two portage paths.