190 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



two centuries ago were all babbling at once. 

 The poor old resurrected milestone had no 

 chance to be heard where it was, so I took it 

 home, and am thankful that my door-yard is far 

 too wide for the neighbors to look across it 

 Here both the milestone and myself are rest- 

 ing in peace, the latter standing boldly out in 

 the winter sunshine, and now a milestone once 

 more, but only indicating how far in the distant 

 past is the old township of Nottingham of two 

 centuries ago. 



First, the Indian trail, and how long every 

 journey must have seemed when threading the 

 deep, dark woods from which dangerous foes 

 might at any time appear ! for these were the 

 days of the lurking cougar, the most dangerous 

 of animals since the time when the Ice Age 

 hunter contended vainly with angered masto- 

 dons. The references to the cougar in colonial 

 documents are few and unsatisfactory, yet these 

 fierce creatures lingered here long after Euro- 

 pean occupation of the country, and certainly 

 before then were not rare, if we may judge 

 from the traces of them found in the ashes of 

 the earlier Indian village sites. Among these 



