"Kingston", watercolour by James Pattison Cockburn.
For the Indians the lakes and rivers were water highways, linked together by overland portages. At first many of the settler's roads followed the old Indian portages. One of the major routes in Upper Canada paralleled the lake shore. This painting illustrates a typical portion of the highway linking Kingston and Toronto in the period before the coming of the railway. What advantage did the Indians' routes have over the straight surveyed roads of the white man? For an account of the famous "Toronto Portage" see P.J. Robinson, Toronto Under the French Regime, 1615-1793, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965).
