"Its starting point was on the west side of Chautauqua creek at Barcelona, within a few rods of the lake. Its course from this point was southerly along the bank of the creek, passing the afterward location of the first grist mill built in the county, by John McMahon, not far from the mouth of the creek, in 1804 or 1805, reached and crossed the now main road at the ancient cross roads, one mile west of the centre of the village of Westfield, at the monument erected there a few years since by Hon. E. T. Foote (1870). From this point by a south easterly course it soon reached the steep bank of the creek Chautauqua, along which it ran for a mile when it passed into a deep gorge of a hundred feet or more in depth, through which the creek ran, by an extensive dugway still plainly to be seen on the lands owned by Miss Elizabeth Stone, where it crossed the creek and by another dugway on lands for many years owned by Wm. Cummings, it reached the high banks a few rods from the present Glen Mills. The passage of this gorge was a work of considerable magnitude. The west bank was so very precipitous that the passage of teams would seem nearly impossible, yet it is said that in later years, before the road on the east side of the creek through the now village of Westfield was opened, vast quantities of salt and merchandise were transported over it from Lake Erie to Lake Chautauqua for Pittsburgh and other points in the Ohio Valley. "On the east side of the gorge the road was less precipitous and is now a public highway. After reaching a point above Glen Mills on the south side of the gorge through which the east branch of the Chautauqua creek now runs, and where the Mayville road is now located at that point, to avoid the rugged section over the hill it passed up the east branch for some distance and continued to the east of the present thoroughfare to Mayville, and reached Chautauqua lake at or near the present steamboat landing." By 1752--the year of Marin's expedition to the Ohio--the old road was well overgrown. In the primeval forests it did not take long for a road to become impassable if unused. Braddock's Road over the Alleghenies, cut in 1755, was impassable in 1758. This road cut in 1749 was cut out again in 1752.[62] In each case three years had elapsed. Marin reached the portage (Barcelona) in April 1752, but, warned perhaps by Céloron, was unfavorably impressed with the practicability of the route and decided to push on and find another portage to the Allegheny. Of this matter we have the testimony of Stephen Coffin, an eye-witness: