As the Indian read in the signs of the trail--the depth of a moccasin print or the direction of a broken twig--the story of those who had journeyed over the path before him, so we can find in the tale of successive kinds of roads the record of the advance of the white man into the West. For roads the French traders used those of the original occupants of the land,--the buffalo tracks and the Indian trails. English-speaking settlers, coming from the Atlantic seacoast, used two main routes. They came either by river and portage up the Ohio and its various tributaries to Presque Isle on Lake Erie, or from Albany across western New York to Niagara. The story of early voyages and of the founding and life of Detroit gives a picture of French exploration and settlement; in like manner there is written in the rapid change of the land and water thoroughfares across New York State, from Indian trail and river course to turnpike, canal, and railroad, the tale of the settlement of the lake region, and of the change from a wilderness to a thickly populated country. As soon as the explorer landed on the southern shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, he came upon buffalo roads or “traces.” Sometimes these were narrow ditches, a foot wide and from six inches to two feet deep, trodden down by the impact of thousands of hoofs as herd after herd of buffaloes had stamped along in single file behind their leaders. When the first path became too deep for comfort because of repeated travel, the buffaloes would abandon it and begin a second path alongside the first, and thus the frequented traces would be gradually widened. Again an immense herd of these heavy animals would crash through the forest, breaking in their rapid progress a broad, deep road from one feeding-ground to another. As this route would be followed again and again by this and other herds, it would become level and hard as rock, so that there was great rejoicing in pioneer settlements when the weary road-makers, struggling with log causeways and swampy hollows, came upon a firm, solid buffalo trace. Nor was this an uncommon experience. The line of many of these roads is followed to-day by our railroads and canals as it was followed in the middle period by log roads and turnpikes. The buffalo was a good surveyor. He did not reason out why he should go in a certain direction, but his sure instinct took him by the easiest and most direct paths over high lands and low to the salt licks and watercourses which were his goal. Indeed, he observed precisely the principles which govern to-day the civil engineer. He followed the level of the valley; he swerved around high points wherever it was possible, crossing the ridges and watersheds at the best natural divides and gorges; and he crossed from one side of a stream of water to the other repeatedly in order to avoid climbing up from the level, after the fashion of our modern loop railways.