It is not surprising that the regions through which the simplest and most direct routes passed should have been those at the two extremities of the great irregular crescent of free soil, where the number of routes was few and the activity of the stations limited. In the states that formed the middle portion of the crescent, it was natural that multiple and intricate trails should have been developed. The fact that slave-owners and their agents often sallied into this region in search of missing chattels was a consideration given due weight by the shrewd operators, who early learned that one of their best safeguards lay in complex routes, made by several lines radiating from one centre, or branch connections between routes, by paths that zigzagged from station to station. These features were characteristic, and serve to show that the safety of fugitives was never sacrificed by the abolitionists to any thoughtless desire for rapid transit. From Cincinnati, Ohio, not less than four branches of the Road radiated. One of these led to Fountain City, Indiana, where it was joined by two other important lines. From this point four lines diverged to the north. At Oberlin as many as five lines converged from the south. Quincy, Illinois, was the starting-point of four or five lines, and Knoxville, Ottawa and Chicago in the same state each received fugitives from several routes. The region in which the devices of multiple routes and cross lines were most highly developed is, as far as known, in southeastern Pennsylvania. Some broken lines and isolated place-names occur upon the map. For example, in Iowa, branches of the system have been traced to Quincy, Indianola, North English and Ottumwa, but beyond these points the connections cannot be made. Examples of such incomplete sections will be found also in northern and central Illinois, in central Indiana, in western New York, in central and eastern Pennsylvania and in other states. It is not to be supposed that the routes represented by these fragmentary lines terminated abruptly without reaching a haven of safety, but only that the witnesses whose testimony is essential to complete the lines have not been discovered. In the case of the isolated place-names, a few of which occur in the New England states, in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, the evidence at hand seemed to designate them as stations, without indicating in any definite way the neighboring stations with which they were probably allied.