n6 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



ball bearings of the glacier serve as the enduring 

 monument of the pioneer. And in these we have 

 the most lasting one that he could raise to him- 

 self. In the passing of enough centuries the slow 

 heaving of frost and subsidence of thaw may 

 throw out of alignment the carefully laid old stone 

 walls. Nature herself in her own good time will 

 throw down and scatter these tables of stone in 

 which the early settlers wrote their laws of the 

 fields. New owners will change those laws and 

 use the stones for the foundations of other enter- 

 prises and thus in time will pass these monuments 

 to the memories of the earliest occupants. It is 

 not so with the old wells. They may fall into 

 disuse, be covered over and filled in and forgotten. 

 But the carefully laid cylinders of stone that en- 

 closed them will remain out of reach of frost, 

 untouched by man through indefinite centuries. 

 Thirty, fifty, in some instances sixty and more 

 feet beneath the surface they lie, and the man of a 

 thousand years hence will find these memorials of 

 early occupancy intact if he will but dig in the 

 right place for them. The old well is the first 

 settler's most enduring monument. I fancy the 



