Note 41 — PAPERS ON AMERICAN SUBJECTS BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY TROUBLES. (continued 2)

From New York into lake Ontario, the land-carriage of the several portages altogether, amounts to but about twenty-seven miles. From lake Ontario into lake Erie, the land-carriage at Niagara is but about twelve miles. All the lakes above Niagara communicate by navigable straits, so that no land-carriage is necessary, to go out of one into another. From Presqu'isle on lake Erie, there are but fifteen miles land-carriage, and that a good waggon-road, to Beef River, a branch of the Ohio; which brings you into a navigation of many thousand miles inland, if you take together the Ohio, the Mississippi, and all the great rivers and branches that run into them.