The Old Coast Road | Page 6

pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns,
commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance,
Robert Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and
set out in a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth.

THE OLD COAST ROAD
From Boston to Plymouth
[Illustration: THE SOUTH SHORE OFMASSACHUSETTS BAY]

THE OLD COAST ROAD

CHAPTER I
DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD
[Illustration]
The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast
Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth--capitals of separate colonies.
Do we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this
continent--do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy
transportation, realize the significance of such a road?
A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The
main passageway from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of
Korea, although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by
myriads of human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the
other hand, wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered
mighty thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the
thread on which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as
well as those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation,
with its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the
entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of
building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail,
will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman
(they to whom the idea of road-building was original) will be
recognized as significant as the quiver of the wings of the first airplane.
Let us follow the old road from Boston to Plymouth: follow it, not with
undue exactitude, and rather too hastily, as is the modern way, but
comfortably, as is also the modern way, picking up what bits of quaint
lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may.
I think that as we start down this historic highway, we shall
encounter--if our mood be the proper one in which to undertake such a
journey--a curious procession coming down the years to meet us. We
shall not call them ghosts, for they are not phantoms severed from earth,
but, rather, the permanent possessors of the highway which they helped
create.

We shall meet the Indian first, running lightly on straight, moccasined
feet, along the trail from which he has burned, from time to time, the
underbrush. He does not go by land when he can go by water, but in
this case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the
streams, and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more
beautiful than the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure
divination of the best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately
be the highway of the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary
Indian--to vanish down the narrow trail of your treading as you are
destined, in time, to vanish forever from the vision of New England!...
Behind the red runner plod two stern-faced Pilgrims, pushing their way
up from Plymouth toward the newer settlement at Massachusetts Bay.
They come slowly and laboriously on foot, their guns cocked, eyes and
ears alert, wading the streams without complaint or comment. They
keep together, for no one is allowed to travel over this Old Coast Road
single, "nor without some arms, though two or three together." The
path they take follows almost exactly the trail of the Indian, seeking the
fords, avoiding the morasses, clinging to the uplands, and skirting the
rough, wooded heights.... After them--almost a decade after--we see a
man on horseback, with his wife on a pillion behind him. They carry
their own provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting
to lead the horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree
to help them in their return journey--mute testimony to the cruder
senses of the white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive.
The fact that this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in
New England. Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown
across the streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their
front feet in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another--the canoes
being lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an
occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have
knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a
capture from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In
1631 Governor Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to