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Show BASIS OF AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 tions or extensive movements of population. Hence the spread of population on the Atlantic seaboard proceeded rapidly enough up- stream to the heads of navigation, but from those points inland progress was much slower and was entirely checked by the mountain- ranges until roads were constructed across them. Of all the routes by which the Appalachian barrier could be crossed, the most favorable in the north was by way of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys to the lakes; but it was closed to the early settlers by the Iroquois, though, subsequently of immense importance. A second route was from the headwaters of the Mohawk to the upper Alleghany. A third route was through southern Pennsylvania to the Monongahela and so to the Ohio River. The fourth well- travelled route was by the broad Appalachian Valley to the southwest and out through Cumberland Gap or the valley of the Tennessee to the more open country beyond. It would also have been possible to go around the southern end of the Appalachian chain, but this way was closed until comparatively modern times by the Cherokee Indians. In: the first settlement of the Ohio Valley the routes bj' Cumberland Gap and the Tennessee were the most important; but with the later improvement of the more direct roads through Pennsylvania these roundabout paths fell into disuse. The discovery of these ways was not a matter of * |