A final, angry, broad brush stroke, the range, its ridges and valleys sweep diagonally across the land transecting it, guarding the west and isolating it. These ancient mountains, stooped with age, were a formidable barrier to the peopling of the plateau. The Indians traversed them along the Kittanning Trail. The Europeans tunneled through them, portgaged over them, and curved their rail tracks and their roadways around them. Not many people did this, not Indian or European.

The land was well-wooded and there was game and the game was hunted. The land was well-watered by rivers and streams and rainfall and the soil was fertile and it was farmed. The waterways were fished. The forests were lumbered. But the mountains were not extensive and were stooped with age and their forests did not provide cover for abundant game. The rivers and streams were shallow and not well-stocked with fish. The Indian people starved or moved on. The well-watered land, even on the plateau, was corrugated with hills and valleys and could not be well-farmed by the Europeans and the lumber cleared from the forests for settlement could not be well-transported downstream on the shallow rivers and streams and the land was not well-peopled, neither then nor now, not by Indian or European. The mountains protected all but themselves.