In the free states included between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers the number of underground trails was much greater than in the states farther east. Bordering on the slave states, Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia, with a length of frontier greatly increased by the sinuosities of the rivers, the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were the most favorably situated of all the Northern states to receive fugitive slaves. Not only the bounding rivers themselves, but also their numerous tributaries, became channels of escape into free territory, and connected directly with many lines of Underground Railroad. These lines of Road are shown on the map as starting from the Ohio or the Mississippi, but they cannot be supposed to have abruptly originated there, for in some instances there were points south of these streams that formed an essential part of the system. It is impossible to bring together here the numerous bits of testimony through the correlation of which the multitude of lines within the old Northwest Territory has been traced. Only a general survey, therefore, of the Underground Railroad system in the Western states will be undertaken, while several smaller maps of limited areas will give the details of the multiple and complex routes found therein. Concerning the number of paths there were in Ohio it is almost impossible to obtain a definite and correct idea. The location of the state was favorable to the development of new lines with the steady increase in the number of slaves fleeing across its southern borders; and, in the process of development, it was natural that the various branches should intertwine and form a great network. To disentangle the strands of this web and say how many there were is a thing not easy to accomplish, although an anonymous writer in 1842 seems to have found little or no difficulty in arriving at a definite conclusion. His estimate appeared in the _Experiment_ of December 7, and is as follows: "It is evident from the statements of the abolitionists themselves, that there exist some eighteen or nineteen thoroughly organized thoroughfares through the State of Ohio for the transportation of runaway and stolen slaves, one of which passes through Fitchville, and which to my certain knowledge has done a 'land office business.'"[435] If the number of important initial stations fringing the southern and eastern boundaries of Ohio be counted as the points of origin of separate routes, it would be correct to say that there were not less than twenty-two or twenty-three routes in Ohio, but in a count thus made one would fail to note the instances in which, as in the case of Cincinnati, several lines sprang from one locality. [435] The _Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 67.