He smiled.
"The road of the white man stops—yes," he answered. "But the road of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee begins."
"What is that?"
He made no answer, but kept on his way until we were under the bole of the first of the forest trees.
"Does my brother Ormerod see anything now?" he asked.
I shook my head, puzzled.
"My brother has much to learn of the forest and its ways," he commented.
He put his hand on my arm and led me around the trunk, Corlaer following with a broad grin on his face.
There at my feet was a deep, narrow slot in the earth, a groove some eighteen inches wide and perhaps twelve inches deep, that disappeared into the gloom which reigned under the interlacing boughs overhead. There was shrubbery and underbrush on every side, but none grew in or on the edge of the slot. It did not go straight, but crookedly like a snake, curving and twisting as it chanced to meet a mossy boulder or a tree too big to be readily felled or uprooted. As I stooped over it I saw that its bottom and steeply sloping sides were hard-packed, beaten down by continual pressure, the relentless pressure of countless human feet for generations and centuries.
"My brother is standing upon the Wa-a-gwen-ne-yuh, the Great Trail of my people." said Ta-wan-ne-ars proudly. "It is the highway of the People of the Long House. Day after day we shall follow it, along the valley of the Mohawks, into the land of the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, on into the valley where the Onondagas keep alight the sacred Council Fire which was kindled by Da-ga-no-weda and Ha-yo-wont-ha, the Founders of the League, and on, still on, my white brother, past the country of the Cayugas to the villages of my own people whom you call the Senecas, and at the last to the Thunder Waters of Jagara, where Joncaire works to conquer the domain of the Long House for the French King."