The controversy as to whether Forbes's route should be through Pennsylvania or Virginia serves to bring into clear perspective one of the most interesting and one of the most important phases of our study--the meaning of the building of a road at that time to either one of those colonies. Nothing could emphasize this more than the sharpness of the quarrel and the position of those concerned in it. It meant very much to Pennsylvania to have Forbes cut a road to the Ohio in both of the two ways suggested by Washington to Governor Fouquier--it fortified her frontier and opened a future avenue of trade. The Old Trading Path had been her best course westward and her trade with the Indians had been nothing to what it would now become. But such as it had been, it was most distasteful to the Virginians to the south who called the West their own. This rivalry was intense for more than a quarter of a century and came near ending in bloodshed; the quarrel was only forgotten in the tumultuous days of 1775. General Forbes seems to have understood very well that his new road would be of utmost importance to Pennsylvania as that province would then have a "nigher Communication [than Virginia] to the Ohio;" and that was the very reason he cut it: because it was shorter--not to please Pennsylvania. If Fort Duquesne was to be captured and fortified and manned and supplied, the shortest route thither would be, as the dark days of 1764 and 1775 and 1791 proved, a desperately long road to travel.