2 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



portions of the great earth's lithosphere of which 

 the coast is built farther north, at Scituate, Na- 

 hant, Rockport and farther on; but it is rock- 

 bound with massed granite boulders, glacier 

 rounded, water-worn, but inexpressibly stern. 



All Plymouth is made up of the results of pil- 

 grimage. How many scores of fathoms deep the 

 real Plymouth shore lies I do not know. It is 

 down there somewhere where it cooled into 

 bathylithic crust back in the gray dawn of time 

 when the earth was made. There it is part of 

 the same ledge of which Scituate and Cohasset 

 are built. All above that is terminal moraine, 

 rock detritus piled upon rock foundation by the 

 glacier. Plymouth Rock itself thus came joy 

 riding from some ledge up Boston way, alighting 

 from this first and greatest New England Trans- 

 portation System only a few hundred thousand 

 years before Mary Chilton arrived to set foot 

 upon it. 



Tide and tempest grind pebbles to shifting 

 sand and give and take away beach and bar 

 yearly, but they do not move the boulders very 

 fast. Manomet shore and even Plymouth beach 

 are rock-bound with these, large and small, today 

 as they were when the Pilgrims fought their des- 



