A pig-sty at Fort Recovery, Ohio, marks the Fort Recovery angle of the famous Greenville Treaty line. Underneath the pen lies the stone which marks the angle and the site of that historic fort and, consequently, St. Clair's battle-ground. The line runs twenty-one miles westward to the pillar raised on Loramie Creek, the historic site of the old French trading post in 40° 16['] north latitude 7° 15[''] west longitude; at the other angle on the Muskingum River the site of Fort Laurens is also a matter of record. In this way, it is true, many points of interest have a definite location but this is true in only a few cases. The writer, recently returning from a tour through Illinois on George Rogers Clark's old route to the conquest of Vincennes took his notes at once to Madison, Wisconsin to revise them from the correspondence carried on by Lyman C. Draper, a generation ago, with the oldest residents of Illinois concerning Clark's route. The remarkable contrast between testimony obtainable now and that secured a generation ago could not have been more strikingly impressive. Indecision, indefiniteness, inaccuracy grow more and more pronounced as the days draw by and an actual experience such as this compels one interested in our country's development to cry out against permitting more time to be lost.
Pennsylvania has set a good example in forwarding a minute study of her frontier forts, two large volumes having been published by that state on the subject. There are signs that there is an awakening interest in definitely locating and marking historic sites. It need not be an expensive work. It is certainly an important one. And the courses of the important carrying places should be early considered.
[1] For an account of the portages in the dry season on the Scioto see _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ii, pp. 55-60.
[2] _The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, vol. xxxvii, pp. 211-213.
[9] As outlined in _Historic Highways of America_, vol. iii, ch. iii. This route of the French to the greater lakes took them away from the Ohio River and long delayed their occupation of the Allegheny and Ohio valleys.
[10] Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_, pp. 34-35.
[12] Céloron on his journey to the Ohio in 1749 did not cross Lake Ontario by the same route pursued by his Indian retinue (Céloron's Journal, in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 11).