ir unused and overgrown roadways, as
they leave the main road in devious twists and turns till they again
join its beaten way. And the halo of early romance and adventure
surrounds them. Holland felt the charm when he wrote thus of the Bay
Path:

"It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight
clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was
bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through
woods which bore the mark of centuries, over barren hills that had
been licked by the Indian hounds of fire, and along the banks of
streams that the seine had never dragged. A powerful interest was
attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws
were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends,
and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That
rough thread of soil chopped by the blades of a hundred streams was
a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of
love and interest and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed
over by friends on the journey and friends at home."

Hawthorne felt it also and said:

"The forest-track trodden by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy
and ponderous Englishmen has now a distinctness which it never
could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many
moccasins. It goes onward from one clearing to another, here
plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine,
but everywhere showing a decided line along which human interests
have begun to hold their career.... And the Indians coming from
their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement marvel at
the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a
flitting presentiment that this heavy tread will find its way over
all the land, and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild
Indian will alike be trampled beneath it."

For many years these paths were travelled, gradually widening from
foot-paths to bridle-ways, to cart-tracks, to carriage-roads, until they
became the post-roads, set thick with cheerful country homes. In some
portions of New England they still are travelled and form the general
thoroughfare, but in many lonely townships the old paths are deserted,
and traffic and passage over the post or county road is gone forever.
Bushes flourish and meet gloomi