The Old Coast Road | Page 7

Boston
to visit Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the
streams. The next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the
difficulty when he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on
the backs of Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the

journey.)
It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were
only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and they were the
occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel!
At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may
not make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era.
The age of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and
bars disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and
in come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled
carts--two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for
winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England
until the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected
to because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted
that all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod
wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember
that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed
for keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every
able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart,
and tools.
But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639,
becomes a genuine turnpike--so chartered in 1803--the good old
coaching days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome
equipages with well-groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back
and forth. Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a
traveler cannot read), spring up along the way, and the post is installed.
But even with fair roads and regular coaching service, New England,
separated by her fixed topographical outlines, remains provincial. It is
not until the coming of the railroad, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, that the hills are overcome, and she ceases to be an exclusively
coastwise community and becomes an integral factor in the economic
development of the whole United States.
Thus, then, from a thin thread of a trail barely wide enough for one
moccasined foot to step before the other, to a broad, leveled
thoroughfare, so wide that three or even four automobiles may ride

abreast, and so clean that at the end of an all-day's journey one's face is
hardly dusty, does the history of the Old Coast Road unroll itself. We
who contemplate making the trip ensconced in the upholstered comfort
of a machine rolling on air-filled tires, will, perhaps, be less petulant of
some strip of roughened macadam, less bewildered by the characteristic
windings, if we recall something of the first back-breaking cart
that--not so very long ago--crashed over the stony road, and toilsomely
worked its way from devious lane to lane.
Before we start down the Old Coast Road it may be enlightening to get
a bird's-eye glimpse of it actually as we have historically, and for such
a glimpse there is no better place than on the topmost balcony of the
Soldier's Monument on Dorchester Heights. The trip to Dorchester
Heights, in South Boston, is, through whatever environs one
approaches it, far from attractive. This section of the city, endowed
with extraordinary natural beauty and advantage of both land and water,
and irrevocably and brilliantly graven upon the annals of American
history, has been allowed to lose its ancient prestige and to sink low
indeed in the social scale.
Nevertheless it is to Dorchester Heights that we, as travelers down the
Old Coast Road, and as skimmers over the quickly turning pages of our
early New England history, must go, and having once arrived at that
lovely green eminence, whitely pointed with a marble shaft of quite
unusual excellence, we must grieve once more that this truly glorious
spot, with its unparalleled view far down the many-islanded harbor to
the east and far over the famous city to the west, is not more frequented,
more enjoyed, more honored.
If you find your way up the hill, into the monument, and up the stairs
out to the balcony, probably you will encounter no other tourist. Only
when you reach the top and emerge into the blue upper air you will
meet those friendly winged visitors who frequent all spires--Saint
Mark's in Venice or the Soldier's Monument in South Boston--the
pigeons! Yes, the pigeons have discovered the charm of this lofty
loveliness, and whenever the caretaker turns away his vigilant eye, they
haste to build their nests on balcony