ain in the colony (there are too few
squirrels, and they are too hard to catch), but they pass through it,
sometimes by day but oftenest by night.

You might think it was perfectly a matter of chance along which path a
bear or a wolf passed, but it was not. He _could_ walk anywhere on the
hillside; and sometimes he would be found far out of the paths that
the squirrels had begun. But usually, when he was in no haste, he took
the easiest path. The easiest one was that which went between the
bushes and not through them; along the hillside and not straight up
it; around the big rocks and not over them. The wolves and bears and
foxes have new and different wants when they come; and they break new
paths to the springs where they drink, to the shade where they lie, to
the hollow trees where the bees swarm and store the wild honey.

But the squirrels were the first surveyors of these tracks. The bears
and wolves are the engineers, who change the early paths to suit their
special convenience.

By and by the Indian hunter comes to follow the wild game. He, too,
takes the easiest trail, the path of least resistance; and he follows
the track to the spring that the deer have made, and he drinks there.
He is an animal as they are, and he satisfies his animal wants
according to the same law that governs them.

After generations of hunters, Indians, and then white men, there comes
a man on horseback looking for a house to live in. He, too, follows
along the easiest paths and stops at the spring; and near by he finds
the place he is looking for. Soon he returns, driving before him herds
of cattle and flocks of sheep, which spread over the grassy glades to
feed. But everywhere they take the easiest place, the old paths, from
the shady tree to the flowing spring. After awhile the hillside is
plainly marked with these sheep trails. You can see them now whenever
you go into the country, on every hillside.

Soon there are neighbors who build their homes in the next valley, and
a good path must be made between the different houses.

A few days' work spent in moving the largest stones, in cutting down
trees, and in levelling off a few steep slopes, makes a trail along
which you can gallop your horse.

Things move fast now,--history begins to be made quickly as soon as
man takes a hand in it. Soon the trail is not enough: it must be
widened so that a wagon-load of boards for a new house can be carried
in (for the settler has found a wi